Bold Love 3

If in fact sin is not only a failure to hit the mark of God's perfection, but also a deep insidious energy that desires to eradicatefrom our existence an affronting God who demands perfection, then forgivenes becomes breathtaking, incredible,and wonderfully insulting

Silence is required for deep change to occurOnce we are silent it is possible to look deeply into God's eyes and disover His response

The silence of being caught is an existential moment that can be prayed for Psalm 139
 ²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart;
       test me and know my anxious thoughts.
 ²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
       and lead me in the way everlasting.

Or prepared for 1 Cor³¹But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.
2Cor 13 ⁵Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?

But not meditated into by concentrating harder

Holy no mercy= despair or pharisee
Mercy no holy = God as anyone's uncle anyhow we like

The Bible protrays God in ways that should stun us

Silence, a quieting of our relentless pulsating fury towards God, occurs when that fury is a t full boil and we meet that God we think we despise. We then find that He is all that we feared, but infinitely more kind than we could ever have imagined

Godly silence alwauys yields stunned joy

only he who knows the greatness of His wrath will be overwhelmed by the depths of His mercy
The cross reveals the wrath AND the mercy of God

Compared to the perfect holiness of God's character, my sanctification in this life is hardly discernible

There is little we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God's wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet.