"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts higher than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55: 8-9 NKJV
I came across another Wayne Jacobsen talking point the other day which got my attention. Wayne and his sidekick were discussing a recent article by Christianity Today writer Mark Galli titled "Let's face it: We resent God." They cite reasons from God's perceived broken promises to not helping us when we feel that we need it. Wayne also mentions that Christians are resentful that God does not assist us in our attempts at building relationship with Him. Does any of this sound familiar? How many believers out there have flat out given up on a God that they feel is out of touch with them? I can honestly say that I've been in those shoes before. For before I came to know God in a more intimate way, I was stuck in the middle of a religious paradigm which taught me that God was a God that I could not approach in my own brokenness. That the best I could do at a relationship was to "Be like" Jesus. Well, my friends, in this instance imitation is not the best form of flattery. I felt unworthy that God did not desire me to be near Him. I felt as if my sinful nature at times left God angry and upset with me. In the end, this led to His ignoring my pleas for help when I needed Him most. Was this the God I had grown up worshipping? Could God really go out of His way to forgive my sins only to then turn His back on me when I needed Him? To many Christians today, this seems like the God they have come to know. No, this is the God we have been TAUGHT to know. For I would suggest that we have been presented with a counterfeit God most of our lives. This counterfeit God is angry, judgmental, vain and extremely jealous. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Unfortunately, walk into many a church these days and this counterfeit God will be the focus of many worship services.
And we know and believe the love which God has in us. God is love, and he who is remaining in love is remaining in God, and God is remaining in him.
1 John 4: 16, Concordant New Testament
One key phrase I took away from the lead into Wayne Jacobsen's podcast was that the feelings of a far off and uncaring, distant God are nothing but the rocks on which religion leaves people shipwrecked. How true! Where is it that we hear the condemning voices of a God who ignores our cries because of our sin nature? Where is it that we are introduced to the idea that a vain and jealous God cannot have us in His presence because of our own sin? Is this the voice of the Lord condemning us? No! These are the thoughts and teachings of our so called religious teachers condemning us. I have a dear friend, a former pastor, who now and again will shudder when he recalls his days in the pulpit speaking the church theology. The door of God's love opened for me when I read the apostle Johns description in 1 John 4:8. John tells us that the one true nature of the Lord God...is love. If God loves me, how could he not desire me to be close to Him? If He indeed loves me, why would He hold a grudge over me from something that has already been destroyed in my life? Indeed, sin has been a stumbling block between ourselves and God for thousands of years. Because of sin, we were told we could not be in His presence. Because of sin, God always kept His distance from us. However, the apostle Paul proclaims Christs ultimate victory over sin at the cross in Romans. We are, as Paul describes, dead to sin {Romans 6:11}. Therefore, if the stumbling block of sin has been removed, what is now preventing us from a close, intimate relationship with the Father? In my opinion, the only thing preventing believers from having that personal relationship with God is adhering to the archaic theology of religion. In this case, religion does not produce relationship, but a life stranded on the rocks.
Knowing this, that our old humanity was crucified together with Him, that the body of sin may be nullified, for by us by no means to be still slaving for sin, for one who dies has been justified from sin. Now if we died together with Christ, we believe that we shall be living together with Him also, having perceived that Christ, being roused from among the dead, is no longer dying. Death is lording it over Him no longer, for in that He died, He died for sin once for all time, yet in that He is living, He is living to God. Thus you also, be reckoning yourselves to be dead, indeed, to sin, yet living to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6: 6-11, Concordant New Testament
~Scott~
https://markgalli.substack.com/p/lets-face-it-we-resent-god?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2NTM2MzAyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0OTc0NDIwOCwiXyI6InBUa0lGIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2NDMxMzc0LCJleHAiOjE2NDY0MzQ5NzQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0zNDYxNCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.Y0MctEYkswRTnH9bfP9Qay116vVUEjR8A_IM9THkpLA&s=r
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