He's not the God you think He is.

He’s kind, and merciful, and longsuffering with us.
It isn’t His will that any should perish.
He has loved us with an everlasting love.

BUT

Imagine if you sold your land and gave all the proceeds to the church except for a small bit – then lied about the selling price so they’d think you gave all – and God killed you and your spouse for it?

He’s not the God you think He is.

Imagine if I took a nice robe and some money from someones home and God set fire to me, and my sons and daughters?

He’s not the God you think He is.

Imagine if your husband was murdered by a man and God made his murderer a king, allowed you to be the murderers wife, and then called the murderer a man after His very own heart?

He’s not the God you think He is.

There are those stories, and so many more concerning Gods handling of situations where His consequences are so far beyond our realm of thinking that if a man chose to do those things today his name would quickly be ranked among those like Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.

And unfortunately, they’re stories that we can’t explain within our beautiful descriptions of Gods love and mercy, His graciousness and overflowing forgiveness and aide to us. So we neglect them. We leave them unlearned from, untaught, unstudied, and leave our views of God woefully halftrue.

I don’t understand the violent nature of God. I wish He were all nice, all the time, and that when He did have to punish someone He’d simply slap their hand and give their new job promotion to someone else. Maybe even give them a flat tire if they’d been really wrong.

But then that’s me. That’s not God.

You see when we do even small things like hold back a part of ourselves and say it’s our all – He gets angry. He demands our all.
And when we hold onto something for ourselves that God didn’t want us to have because he wanted every last bit of it gone – He gets angry. He demands our desires be for Him and not for the physical things He’s trying to purge out complete.
And when someone sins against you, in gory, ugly ways that we know God has to have hated and (to us) devalues everything good that persons ever done – He forgives so radically that it doesn’t seem fair to us.

He’s not "exactly like us only nicer".

He’s a King. King of ALL Kings. He is a Mighty Terrible One.

e is also a Friend and Comforter, and loving Father.

But when you stop your definition of Him as a friend that sticks closer than a brother – He’s not the God you think He is.