seeing God for who He is.

The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and rage. He takes revenge on all who oppose him and continues to rage against his enemies! The Lord is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. He displays his power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are the dust beneath his feet. At his command the oceans dry up, and the rivers disappear. The lush pastures of Bashan and Carmel fade, and the green forests of Lebanon wither. In his presence the mountains quake, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles, and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before his fierce anger? Who can survive burning fury? His rage blazes forth like fire, and the mountains crumble to dust in His presence. The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him. But he will sweep away his enemies in an overwhelming flood. He will pursue his foes into the darkness of night. - Nahum 1:2-8

A few months ago I attended a Secret Church simulcast at my church. For the first time that I can ever remember in my 20 years of going to church I heard that God hates sinners. I have never been a regular attender of a "feel-good" kind of church. But even in the churches I have gone to and the way I have been taught and the way I have studied the Bible I have created my own version of God. The Bible says the I am created in the image God not the other way around. It is not up to me to determine who God is. 

In the verses above we see a jealous, vengeful God then at the end we see that God is good and a comfort to his people. How can he be both? Because he is God. I have dumbed God down to fit into something that I can understand and into who I want him to be. I have made him into a sweet and innocent being that will forgive all my sins and love me just the way that I am. I have bought into a lie about who God is. A lie that is comfortable and that sounds good. 

Since January, I have been reading through the Bible. I have never read all the way through. I started in Genesis and am going book by book. Throughout the Old Testament I have begun to see these characteristics of an angry God. A God who cannot stand sin. A God who brings severe punishment on his people when they disobey him. Before this year I had heard many of these stories but I had never made the connection that God hates my sin in the same way that he hated the sins of the people in the Old Testament. God takes sin very seriously and so should I. 

I pray that I will stop creating my own version of God and that I will seek Him and worship Him for who He truly is.