Know Thy God

"The people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits" (Daniel 11:32).

Eternity is a lonely place.  God is lonely.  God feels and he has a heart.   He made Man in his own image, and gave Man a sovereign will and freedom so he can choose.  The Lord is an intelligent designer and everything he does is wise and has purpose.  He gave Man life so that Man can prove himself worthy to spend eternity with God, to be an instrument for his praise.  He wants to be a proud father.    

God shared his loneliness and his heart with me.  There is a Bible verse that makes me laugh and want to cry at the same time: 

“I have trodden the winepress alone; no one was there to help me.  In my anger I have trampled my enemies as if they were grapes.  In my fury I have trampled my foes.  It is their blood that has stained my clothes.  For the time has come for me to avenge my people, to ransom them from their oppressors.  I looked but no one came to help my people.  I was amazed and appalled at what I saw.  So I executed vengeance alone; unaided, I passed down judgment.  I crushed the nations in my anger and made them stagger and fall to the ground.”  Isaiah 63:3-6

When I first read that verse I actually laughed out loud.  I know God’s fury and vengeance and have experienced it.  When fools test God and bring his vengeance I laugh as one who knows what they are going to experience, and at their foolishness for bringing it upon themselves like a man might laugh at a youth who puts a fork into an electrical socket after he was warned not to, but then I read it again, and started to tear up.  God doesn’t want that.  He loves us.  He wants us to be happy.   I wept because I know God’s loneliness and I felt for him. He doesn’t need help, but he wants Man to choose him and be a companion and friend.     

A few years ago I found myself at the Ugly Stick Tavern in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  It was a large outdoor bar with a couple stages, and there were a lot of people and a band playing southern rock music.  The bartenders would occasionally get up on the bar and start dancing.

I sat by myself and drank for a few hours enjoying the music, my drink, and watching people on a warm North Carolina summer night.  I didn’t have anyone to go out with.  I had moved to the area because the Army told me to, it was my duty, and everyone I knew was over a thousand miles away on the other coast.  The soldiers in my unit were all married, in a different phase of their life, or of a lower rank then me, and it would be against regulations for me to drink with them.  I had a choice between sitting alone in my barracks room being depressed and miserable, or going out to the bar and enjoying the North Carolina summer.  I went out to the bar. 

Towards midnight, I would see all the happy people enjoying themselves, dancing, drinking, and flirting and feel completely and utterly alone, and on the outside of everything going on around me.  There was no one there I cared to talk to, and no one took much notice of me.  I had little in common with anyone.  None of the women interested me, and none of the Men seemed like anyone I would like to know.  In the middle of this crowd of people I felt alone like I was in a bubble.  This loneliness I felt was intensely complete.  It was horrible, it would happen quite a few times.  I felt a depressed, angry pain.  Depressed because of how alone I was, and angry that I couldn’t find anyone to relate with.  I would swallow my pain, pay my tab and leave.  Eventually, I learned to accept this loneliness, and be comfortable with it.  God’s spirit became my companion.   

God feels this loneliness when his creation turns away from him; however, instead of becoming depressed and leaving like I did, he becomes enraged.  We are his creation.  He gave us instructions and commandments to follow, and he should not have to feel that loneliness around his own creation.  He created Man so that he could work to be like God, to be righteous and just.   As a leader, he set the example, and shows Man how to live, how to be prosperous, righteous, and bring Glory, yet, in our foolish ignorance we forget God.  The Lord is a Man of War, and his anger is slow, but if humanity doesn’t correct itself and repent when it falls into idolatry and wickedness, God starts stomping.  Don’t make him have to do that.    

After experiencing this loneliness, and after moving to Tennessee, I have this urge to make family.  To find a good career, and young women to marry, and to have as many children as I possibly can, but not just to have children, but to create something special.  To have family, companionship and to teach those children values so that they can lead and show others how glorious life can be if they choose the path of righteousness.  I want to be, in a way, a creator so that I don’t have to ever feel that loneliness again. 

 Modern Christians tend to forget God the father, the Old Testament, and focus just on Jesus.  Focusing on Jesus even to the point where they create a cult around him.  That is dangerous.  Jesus is important.  Jesus is our savior, but you can’t forgot the one who sent him, the one who sent the flood, who destroyed Saddam and Gomorrah, the one who led the Israelites our of Egypt, the one who lead the Israelites in many military victories, God the Father.  It is hard for modern man to appreciate him because his way is very different from the humanists and the lies and morality they project.  It is easier for modern Christians to ignore God the father, take false idols into their hearts, and live easy lives just getting along because they don’t want their feelings hurt.  That is not God’s way.

The Lord is a Man of War. (Exodus 15:3) The Lord will march out like a champion, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies. (Isaiah 42:13)
The Lord is not just any Man of War.  The Lord is like a Great Warrior King, a Warrior King like King David or King Arthur from English legend.  Like a Great Warrior King he works to establish his Kingdom here on Earth where he will establish Justice and Peace and Golden Age of Glory.  Like Solomon was to David, Jesus is God’s son, and will be your King of Kings, the Prince of Peace over this time of Glory. 

God is Man of War and Love Both.  He is the Alpha and Omega.  The First and the Last.  When it comes to God, go big or go home.  He doesn’t like luke warm believers because that leads to complacency, decay, and sin.  God wants Christians to be like David and stand up to Goliaths.  He wants man to love woman in such a way that songs would be written about it like Solomon and Abishag in the Song of Songs.  God loves Glory.  When what you want meets up with his will at Glory, he has your back. 

Everything he does is just and has reason and purpose.   His anger is slow.  He gives his creation time to repent and come back to him, but he stores up your sins in a jar, and when that jar overflows, so comes his judgment in the form of Conquest, War, Famine, and Plague.  His creation goes through tribulations.  Like a Drill Sergeant in the Army forcing recruits to do pushups and physically and mentally challenging them, God both punishes and conditions you if we allow society to fall into idolatry.

Idolatry is the sin he hates the most.  His number one commandment is do not follow false idols.  Idolatry is what leads mankind into other sins and wickedness.  God judges the false teachers more harshly, and false teacher are those priests and prophets who instruct his creation in sins against him.  Today we have a War on Drugs in America.  God doesn’t chase after the drug users, he goes for those who sell and produce those drugs, and those that know of the evil and allow it, watch it, doing nothing for such is sloth; however, those drug users, those idolaters sometimes need to be purified.  To be made white so they do not lead their children, his little ones, and neighbors into the same sins, but their punishment and conditioning will be far less than those false teachers who will know his everlasting Wrath.