We can choose to believe in whatever God we want. Name it, claim it, yeah, that’s one version. Court judge, ready to drop the gavel. That’s another. Hands off observer, unwilling to interfere…many people see God in this fashion.
God allows us this choice. He permits us to follow after any version of him we want. He doesn’t want little robots walking the earth, all raising their arms at the same time to repeat, “God is good…,” just because he flips some imaginary toggle switch. He wants us to learn his true nature and worship him because we are emotionally connected to him.
There’s a story about a man who reluctantly agrees to turn off the TV, help his wife clear away the dinner dishes, and clean the kitchen. She bursts into tears and tells him to go back and watch TV. Confused, he asks what’s wrong. She reveals that it’s not help with the dishes that she needs. She needs him to want to help with the dishes.
That’s God and us. It’s not about following all the rules in the Bible. That’s important, and we can’t discount it, but there’s more. If we follow all the proscribed do’s and don’ts, and we drag our feet the entire time, God’s not interested. He desires us to want to follow his rules.
Exodus 20:1-26 reveals how much God needs our interest in him to come from our heart:
“And God spoke all these words, saying, ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me...’ ”
We find out more about God in this passage, revealing each of the Ten Commandments, but the essence of his nature is clear in these beginning verses. God is jealous for our love. He wants us to view him in the same way he sees us, as objects of his adoration, people for whom he is willing to do all manner of wondrous things. God wants us to want to show our love unto him.
God needs our love to be voluntary and from the heart. He will respond in kind to our outpouring of love toward him.
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Code: FGO.E.29.16b.vp.esv