“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” Numbers 23:19
There is such a temptation to make God in our image. That way He becomes someone we can more easily relate to and try to manipulate.
What? You’ve never tried to manipulate God by promising Him something to get something you want from Him? “God if you’ll just get me out of this mess I promise I’ll….” (fill in the blank). We know how to weasel what we want from humans, this doesn’t work with God.
Your relationship with God is unlike any other relationship you will ever have because He needs nothing from you. There is nothing we can offer to Him to change His mood or to make Him more gracious or forgiving. He is what He is, to coin a phrase.
This why religion (doing or not doing something to make God happy with us) is an exhausting futility. God initiates the relationship with us because of who He is not because of what we do. God reveals Himself to us because He is good, not because we are good.
Once we accept this reality life takes on a freedom and a joy we can never sustain in any other way. Let’s take religion out of our relationship with God and rest in His grace.
The Grace Link 