Keep your word

I have already begun this journey through scripture but I wanted to start a blog to record my thoughts about what I find. I have had a hard journey seeing how God relates to me. I wanted to see the truth of the scriptures for myself. I could not rely on another persons opinion any longer because I never really accepted them as my own anyway. I was tired of vacillating back and forth between He loves me, He loves me not. So I asked God one night if He would be willing to walk with me through a read through (Not a study because it would not drop down from my head to my heart if I did it that way.)of the Bible looking for how God relates to, well anything. I was looking at how He relates to man especially though. I asked Him for His approval because I know me and if I did not know for a fact that God wanted me to do this I would fall away form it in one way or another. i have been beginning to do just that but God has been pulling me back in and asking me to be faithful, faith filled, and trusting that He will show up in the texts. I think I hit a dry spell and a hard spell in the scriptures I was reading and gave up. I had also made it a study. Surprise! Surprise! I in short grew legalistic and tired with and of it.

Well here goes.................

Ex. 20


The first thing I see is that God is jealous. He wants His people to be dedicated to Him and not to go to other gods. Like a lover he wants Israel to not be in a relationship with any other guy. To be faithful. He also has some rules as to how we are to act toward him. God also shows Himself as other than us. Fearful, lighting, thunder. Israel did not even want to go near Him. They said you go Moses. You talk to Him and tell us what He says. Moses said do not fear Him. He does this to test you to make you fear Him so you will not sin. Don't fear Him because He wants you to fear Him. What? Don't fear that He will hurt you but fear because He could. God talked with His people and He required sacrifice. I don't understand all the stuff about the alter being made of earth and if it was made of cut stone it would be profaned or about walking up steps would reveal our nakedness. None of that makes a whole lot of sense to me but what I did get was that God had wanted relationship with Israel. He wanted to be the only God in their life and he had some rules as to how they were going to get along. Oh yeah, and God was really big and scary but He was not doing it to make them fear that He would hurt them but rather to make them see how fearful HE really was and to respect His ways. It was a safeguard to insure that the people would keep the law so that they could stay in relationship with God. Because if they feared God they would not want to go against what He said but would want to obey Him. I am struggling though because to do this there had to be the chance that He would hurt them or else what is there to fear. I wonder if it is more the motive behind the hurt. Like the difference between a spanking for discipline and a parent hitting their child. One is a good parent the other is abusive but they both hit. The only thing is the motive behind it. God was saying don't fear that I will cause you pain but know that I am capable of it.