Wrath of God
Keith Cowart gave a fantastic message this morning on the wrath of God from Hosea. Many believe that the old testament God is a god of wrath and the new testament God is a god of grace. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He had wrath in the OT and he has wrath today. Wrath means "passionate anger". God's passionate anger comes out of His passionate love for us. When God speaks anger, it is always to draw Israel back to Him.

God is holy. God is 100% pure. Sin is sin because it is contrary to the very nature of God. It is anti-God, anti-life. He knows it will kill us. And it isn't just sex, drugs and rock and roll....it is pride, it is envy, it is selfishness, it is gossip, it is lust. Satan dresses it up and makes it pretty but it always has a hook and it clutches our soul and kills our life.

God hates this because He knows the cost. He sees us pulled toward the sin and He knows the outcome. God gave himself totally to us knowing we would turn on him.

We can see this in our relationship with our children. We see the decisions they are making and we know the outcome of those decisions. When we counsel them to not make a certain decision and they defy us and do it anyway, it angers us. It angers us because we know best, we know the outcome and we know the ultimate cost of the poor decision. It angers us because our children, like sheep, have gone astray -- they turn their backs on us and the love we offer them in our advice.

So it is with God.

Sin steals, kills and destroys.
God sees it - He sees what it does to us, He sees that it pulls us away from Him, He knows that it makes us deaf and blind.
He is jealous lover of my soul.
He passionately loves me and only wants fullness for my life.
Sin makes my life less than full - less than the design God has for my life.
He stands firm, He is my rock and He alone breaks the bondage.
Freedom! Freedom!
He breaks and destroys the bondage that snares me so I can be free to worship Him fully!
F R E E D O M !!!!

Go to www.youtube.com and type in "Lifetime Everything Skit" - and watch this 5 minute skit.
It is an incredibly powerful picture of God loving us, showing us all the good He created. Then, it shows all sorts of temptations coming against man, pulling man away from Him. It shows the depravity of mankind. In desperation, man turns back to God and God is there to pull man out of the fire and fully restore him.

There was not a dry eye in the service this morning following this message and this powerful illustration.

Soar!