Balancing Truths: Pt. 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. Welcome to a new workweek, and I want to start this week with you the best way possible. We’re going to open the Bible and hear from God. That’s why we call these spots time with God. God wants to spend time with you. He wants you to spend time with Him. Following God isn’t just about a way of life. It’s about knowing God, and God wants to be involved in your life.

All this week we’re going to be looking at the theme of balancing truths. There are ways that we like to look at the Bible, things we like to focus on in the Bible, things we zero in on, things that make us feel good sometimes.

But there are balancing truths that we need to hold in tension with those truths, and these are what I want to look at with you this week. Here’s our truth for today.

God is loving and offers grace and forgiveness, but He is also angry about sin and will bring judgment.

Balancing truths when you read the prophet Nehemiah in the Old Testament of the Bible in chapter 1 verse 7.

We see the first part of that balancing truth. Here’s what it says. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.

Well, that’s the kind of verse you would memorize, isn’t it? It’s something we love that we lean on this character of God. He’s loving. He’s steadfast. He offers grace and forgiveness. He’s there for us in the hard times. But let me read you the whole paragraph that that verse sits in starting in verse 2.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

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The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

He rebukes the sea and makes it dry. He dries up all the rivers. Basan and Carmel wither. The bloom of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake before him. The hills melt. The earth heaves before him. The world and all who dwell in it, who can stand before his indignation.

Who can endure the heat of his anger. His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. And then our verse – The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him.

But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of his adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness.

Well this is God.

God isn’t one dimensional. He is a whole person, and while He loves us as His children, welcomes us into His family, forgives us because of what Jesus did at the cross for us, and treats us with loving care.

Also He is very angry about sin and will bring judgment to people who have not found that forgiveness and become a part of His family. Both of these things are true. Don’t forget it.

I’m John North.

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