Noncompliant God

Many years ago I heard a preacher say that the Gospel message had become man centered.  He went on to explain that man had become the center of the universe and God was in orbit around him providing for his every wish.  As I write this today, it seems that is the more the case in this day than when it was first spoken.  When you go back and read writings of many of the preachers and theologians from 100+ years ago you see a very different perspective of God and His nature.  Of course, He was a God of love, mercy, redemption and grace.  Yet, it was clear that man's role was to love, enjoy and serve God. As man lived in "right" relationship with God and lived within the protective boundaries of God's Truth, he would be blessed and live a life of purpose and fulfillment.  But, if man lived outside the parameters of Truth, no such protection and purpose would be enjoyed.

It seems that at the root of this move away from a Biblical view of God and man is a perversion of the nature, personality and Holiness of God.  Man today seems to see God through human understanding only.  As a young man I might hear an unbeliever or a novice Christian say, "why would a loving God allow suffering in the world?" Yet, it would be a very rare thing to hear a true disciple of Jesus ask such a question. Why? Because they had a real, living relationship with Him and an ongoing knowledge of the entire Bible.  Today it is common place to hear Christians say such things and also make statements about their faith and doctrine as, "I know God would never do this or that because he is a loving God."  If you press their belief they will simply say, "I don't believe God would do that!"  Their belief is in their perspective based on what they would like God to be and do, not necessarily the Scripture.  One of the worst cases of this was a few years ago when a man made an appointment to share some "new revelation" with me from the Bible.  He was reading in the book of Revelation and saw Jesus was holding a bow.  He said, "this bothered me that Jesus would be holding an instrument of war, a bow, so I realized that it was  a bow tie as he was dressed up coming to meet his Bride!"  It was all I could do not to laugh in his face!  How could he arrive at such a conclusion?  First, because he was not reading a regular diet of the Scripture.  He was picking and choosing what he wanted to read and listening to teachers saying what he wanted to hear.  Secondly,  he formed an opinion of who and what he wanted God to be and then proceeded to interpret Scripture based upon that man made image.   God is not nor will He become the god we want him to be.  HE IS WHO HE IS!  God is not a compliant God!  We must read the Scripture, Old and New Testament regularly with an open mind and heart and let the Bible tell us what we should believe. We cannot open the Bible with preconceived doctrine and try to find verses to confirm our vision.  We may find those verses but they will usually be out of context.  

Let us remove ourselves from the altar of our lives and ask Jesus to come and sit in that sacred place.  Then, in a place of worship may we serve Him with joy!