The Heart of God

A friend who is searching came to me the other day with one of those hard passages from The Book. You know, the ones that make us squirm and make God look like a bastard, when read in isolation. That was the whole problem, my friend read the passage and took it at face value without understanding the person of God. They don't know alot about Him, so at first glance, his direction seems very heavy handed.

I explained that taking a verse out of The Book in isolation is like listening to a media sound byte. It is easy to take out of context, both what the person is saying and who the person is. My 13 year old does the same thing when she tells her friends, "my parents won't let me",... They don't hear the explanation. They don't know us, so they don't see the love we have for Kikki. They don't have the luxury of "the bigger picture", so they think we suck.

This is where many stand with God, we don't always know His heart. We forget His love for us. All we can see is that He is telling us something we don't want to hear and we don't like it. So, we quickly paint Him as a cosmic killjoy and go about our way.

Our first challenge as people on a journey with Him is to remember who He is and how He feels about us. We need to remember that, like it or not, the "rules" are there to protect us. They are bourne out of love, not a desire to torment.

The second challenge we have is to communicate this to the world at large. It is a challenge to change years of bad christian teaching and present God in the light that He deserves. It is important to talk about motivation and character, when we have conversations about God, because this is where the rest of the story stems from.

Peace,

K