God is my Dad Part 1

I don’t know how I can explain my faith or my belief in God to you. I don’t know if I know enough about Him to say anything. Sometimes to be honest, I have serious doubts about whether He’s really out there or where did He come from, who made God, what comes next? But what I hold on to is that first of all, there has to be something out there, some sort of order to life right? To determine life and death, to create everything. Second, the Bible is the most historically credible book. So, if I believe He exists and I believe in His word, then I’ve gotta believe he’s real and He’s there. I can’t explain it any better; I hope that gets through to you.

I don’t just believe in Him to get through the day or to make myself feel better or to get to experience cool things. I’ve done all that without Him. But, you and I both know that it’s never enough, that despite how many friends you have or how many places you’ve travelled or how well your life is set up, it’s never enough. That’s because God created us to have a relationship with him. The only time in History, man was ever truly happy was when he and his wife were walking along in Eden communing with God.

Then sin happened and separated us from God. Our mistakes, our failures everything that’s made us separated from Him, that’s what sin is. All through the Bible we see consequences of this sin, death and destruction. ^{1 and 2}

God being just, tried to help people get some discipline for themselves to try and get back to where they were with Him, that’s why you see in Exodus and Leviticus all these rules He set up and some pretty strict consequences for breaking these rules. ⁸ It’s not because God was mean or He’s some sort of police officer or executioner. We are NOT characters in a video game God is playing looking down on us and waiting to press “DESTROY”.

God was trying to get us to get back to that place of oneness with him. Wow, can you imagine the Israelites, seeing all these wonders, the Red Sea parting and destroying their enemies, being led by a cloud to shield them from the sun during the day and a pillar of fire to warm them at night, food from heaven, and water from a rock. I mean, God was there! ^{3, 4 and 5} Wow, our loving God was there, and He wanted this oneness to continue, so He set up these rules to keep them in tune with Him. But, they broke the rules, so God tries again. He orders the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, so they could carry the very presence of God wherever they went. ¹¹ Again, they broke the rules. To put it in a way that you’d understand, I mean, at this point, God is like stalking them, saying “please be my friend, please be my friend” but the Israelites, shunning the very presence of God, want to turn to idols and elect a king like they saw their neighbors doing. There was a reason why God kept them circling the same mountain for 40 years, ⁶ they had 40 years to be prepared, to be SO in tune with God that when they got to their neighbors who worshipped all these other false Gods, they would know for sure that their God was the one true God, but even 40 years didn’t help them.