So I am starting this off by saying I am NOT a blogger. My background has been in teaching, so I write not as a blogger but someone that is just passing along the things that have been shown to me. You may find this (and other "blogs") of use...you may not. It doesn't hurt my feelings either way. In some ways this is just an online journal for me...SO here goes what I've been learning.
In a season of my life where my sin is ever before me, God is showing His mercy, His grace, His blessing (no matter how undeserved...and His blessing to me is completely undeserved).
I have been reading in Ezekiel. A couple of things that keep sticking out to me are that God keeps saying He will bring some sort of disaster, but it will be so, "You will know I am the LORD God". His desire is to be known. His desire is to be known, because in knowing Him we have life! In a couple of spots He adds in, "they will know that I am the LORD their God" (28:26). He does this as He is assuring them (and us) of His continued love for His people. God is about His glory and His name...it is all that matters!
In 20:40-44, He tells the people that they will see His glory. In that time they will be aware of their sin, their corruptness. They will see and remember what they have done and they will loathe it. When we come in contact with a holy God, when He confronts us with our sin, we have a since of despair and loathing. God does not want us loathe ourselves and fall into some sort of depression. In fact that loathing and realization of our sin is meant to draw us to Him. It is meant to make us realize we can't gain salvation or redemption on our own. If we could we wouldn't need Jesus.
In the loathing of our struggle with sin, God says, "you shall know that I am the LORD, when I deal with you for my name's sake, not according to your evil ways, nor according to your corrupt deeds." PRAISE THE LORD! Praise the LORD that even before Jesus showed up on the scene, God was not dealing with us according to our sin. AND NOW, after Jesus has come we have the exact nature of God's love shown in what Jesus did for us by taking our sin upon Himself at the cross.
It is also striking that God will teach us who He is by not killing us on the spot for our sin. He shows grace and in that grace He shows Himself!
My prayer for myself and for all that follow Jesus is that we would recognize it is in God's grace toward us that His name is made known. Don't try and hide your sin away, know that it is through God's gracious gift to us that His name is known!
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