"The God I was taught doesn't match the God I'm reading about."
How it sounds in your head: They said He was angry and demanding, but Jesus seems different. Either I'm reading it wrong or everything I built my life on was a distorted version. I don't know which is more terrifying.
"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person."
-- Hebrews 1:1-3Religious tradition that presented God through the lens of human anger rather than Christ's revelation.
Decades of sermons emphasized wrath and条件, but her own reading reveals a Father who runs toward sinners. The cognitive dissonance is destabilizing everything she thought she knew.
Philip asked Jesus to show them the Father, after three years of ministry. Jesus responded: 'Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.'
I REFUSE the lie that discovering God's true nature means losing my faith. IT IS WRITTEN that Jesus is the express image of God's person, and everything I need to know about the Father is revealed in the Son. The harsh God of religious teaching is NOT my Father—the One who ran to the prodigal IS. IT IS WRITTEN that he who has seen Jesus has seen the Father. I am blessed with the BARAK of Abraham, which protected him even when he got God wrong. My theology doesn't determine God's goodness—His covenant does. I declare I'm meeting the real Father for the first time.
The Father is celebrating that you're finally seeing Him clearly instead of through religion's distorted mirror. He's been waiting for you to discover He's better than they said—and He's not offended by your shock.