QUOTE OF THE DAY.

"You have been told that God is a loving, gracious, merciful, kind, compassionate, wonderful, and good sky fairy who runs a day care in the sky and has a bucket of suckers for everyone because we’re all good people. That is a lie… God looks down and says ‘I hate you, you are my enemy, and I will crush you,’ and we say that is deserved, right and just, and then God says ‘Because of Jesus I will love you and forgive you.’ This is a miracle.”

Attributed to Mark Driscoll.

You know its really easy to believe in a God of Love who is merciful and good and kind. All of those things are true enough. But the main thing we need to know is that God has something that he just cannot do. God cannot tolerate sin. That's right God cannot and will not tolerate our sin and let us be quite honest here we are sinners who fall massively short of God's standards. The truth is we all, when judged by God (and we all will be) we will all fall massively short. The judgment that will be passed is death. There is nothing we ourselves can do about it. But this is what is amazing. God does something about it and the cost is immense. He sends his one and only son to die in our place.

The upshot of this is that Jesus gets my mess and disgrace and I get his righteousness, he gets my sin and shame and I stand before the father who can now look on me and have relationship with me because I am now without sin. Why oh why Lord do you care and love ME so much, that truly is amazing.