The problem for many is that they can't fathom worshiping a God who isn't like them. God ISN'T like us, though. What about us is perfect? What about us is good? Who of us is holy? What in us naturally seeks selflessness and thankless service? Who enjoys humility and repentance? Who of us doesn't seek selfish pleasure to a degree? No one. Why would we want to love a God who points out our flaws and brings us to change if He loves us "just as we are?"
We wouldn't. You don't naturally choose a God who rips out the heathen from within you, shows you how unworthy of His holiness you are, and then commands you to walk about-face in a testimony to the truth that He is who He says He is.
Just as we are? What a crock. We can't even bring a plea before God for Him to answer without His imputed gift of faith to us. Without His grace, we're shameful and deceitful, and if possible, many of us would even try to deceive God Himself.
But it's impossible. He changes us and transforms us by His glory, by His own blood, for His glory. Nothing else but His own plan will satisfy Him, and nowhere else can we find lasting satisfaction, because although we suffer through afflictions and wrestle with our damaged and weakened bodies and minds and hearts, and though our strength is pathetic, God shows Himself strong through our weaknesses, and Christ is exalted as He SHOULD be.
People want a weak God so that they can pass all their faults onto Him, blame Him and excuse themselves, enjoy their wickedness and vile lusts and see themselves as flawless. Just as good as God because He loved us just as we are. No difference therefore, no iniquity. No big deal.
But if the bar of holiness was lowered even by a breath, or if there was one tiny atom out of place in God's perfect makeup, His praise-worthy essence, we'd have no love to speak of, no hope at all, and we'd never know a joy greater than for each and every one of us to live, to die, and to rot in daily torment of hell-fire.
There is one God. You're not Him. If you want a piece of Him, so help Him, He will make it out of you, and you will be seen as rotting flesh to the world because you will insult their pride every time you wake up, every time you speak, and every time you so much as flush a toilet in a half-dazed sleepwalk. Glory, fame, praise, honor, and ALL gratitude belongs to the Lord and the Lord ALONE. Not a soul can remain the same as they once were when they have become regenerated by God. Not a soul.
If you think you love God and yet He is not as holy and wrathful against the unrighteousness of the wicked as I have barely spoken of, you only lie to yourself. May you study the Scriptures to know, and may His presence come before you to magnify Himself, make you nothing, and compel you to fall on your face and worship Him instead of yourself.
"It is in vain, o men, that you seek within yourselves a cure for your miseries. All your insight only leads you to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you will discover the true and the good. Philosophers promised them to you and they've not been able to keep their promise. They do not know what your true good is or what your true state is. How then could they have provided for you a cure for the ills which they have not even understood? Your principle maladies are pride which cuts you off from God and sensuality which binds you to the earth and they have done nothing but foster at least one of these two maladies. If they have given God for you for an object it has been to pander your pride. They made you think that you were like Him and resemble Him in your nature, and those who have grasped the vanity of such pretensions have cast you down into the other abyss by making you believe that your future is like that of the beasts of the field and have led you to seek your good in lust, which is the lot of the animals." -Pascal
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