"This is what the Almighty LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: You can be saved by returning to Me. You can have rest. You can be strong by being quiet and by trusting Me. But you don't want that." Isaiah 30:15 (GWT)
We don't want to hear anymore of the sin of our fathers that has come down through the generations since Adam surrendered his purpose to the serpent's call and thus created the barrier between a righteous and holy God and fallen man. We have excommunicated the thought of original sin from our sermons and our productions within the church walls, instead of opting for a "love" ideology.
A God who loves us wouldn't punish us for the sin of another, would He? He wouldn't allow those who truly benefit and serve their fellow man to be 'cast into the lake of fire', right? He would represent the ultimate 'feel-good' moments of our lives when our parents or another loved one wrapped us in their arms where we felt protected and safe. He would be something that we could point to and say, "See, He is good…..because He loves me through protecting me from harm, death, and sin's punishment." He is good because we are the ones defining what that good is. Or we accept the church doctrine upon which we base our limited religious knowledge.
And then the world steps in. And like chaff separating from the wheat, our religiosity goes flying off on the invisible wind of painful realization.
There is pain in the world, it happens to people we consider 'good' (i.e. good fathers, mothers, sons, daughters who highlight the honorable things we look to as good). A faithful servant, desiring only the assurance of their loved ones' realization of salvation, frantically proclaims the promise of Christ to those dear ones as they lie gasping for the breath that will keep them alive for one more moment is hopelessly lost when they breathe no more, without any positive sign of salvation's acceptance.
A daughter, struggling with the near death experiences of her father, struggles to ensure confidence in herself that "God has a special place in Heaven for givers like you, Dad." But that easiness that she seeks never comes. And her faith blows away as she watches a man she dearly loves come nearer to death, both physically and spiritually.
A man, realizing his sinful and destructive life, fights daily with himself to overcome those tendencies to seek self-protection, self-fulfillment, and self-worth as priorities and continues to imperfectly love. He cries out to the God of Love as he watches his marriage collapse into a broken ruin at his feet.
We don't want to hear of our own destructive nature, and the inherited birthright of death because of the sinful ways we have cultured since the beginning of mankind. We claim to seek God and when that construct fails to appease our sensibilities, we reject it for another easier adaptable one.
We fight against ourselves in our attempt to gain that which we desire most.
Freedom.
We consider ourselves basically good, born into a world that is working against us at every turn. We look to those who seem to enjoy a fruitful, wealthy, and fulfilling life for the answers we cannot discover ourselves, and are frustrated when they don't work for us. We would rather remain in the dark than to realize the Truth is beyond our manipulations.
And we pass by the very thing that would give us our desires.
We look at those in positions of strength and envy them, not realizing that we can have far greater strength in One who is strength. We only have to stop and listen to His voice, and implant within our hearts the desire to know Him.
In serving a greater Truth, we grow in confidence and comfort in the ability to ride out the inconsistencies of a broken world's attempt to harm us. By growing in knowledge of the True God, we realize that despite the best efforts of the sinful nature we were born with, we can sit in quietness, enabling a peace in our minds that defy all outside influences; unaffected by death, disease, or destructive natures.
And we stop seeking self-fulfillment and self-protection because we gain an supernatural peace that there is Someone who can do the job so much better because He is so much more capable.
Then the impact of what was given on that Cross so many years ago impacts us like a ton of bricks, and we realize that there is nothing any man could've done to give us that.
And we realize there is indeed a God.
Not one of manly construction, not one capable of manipulation, and not one who is only made up of love as man defines it but so much more than a simple explanation of love.
And we find love beyond measure, peace above the struggle, and hope that endures any frightening storm.
We find God.
And we realize He's been waiting for us to turn around and look.
