A User-friendly God?

I liked this comment from Joel Beeke in his book Living for God's Glory:

Too many of us today present God as more user-friendly than His own Word does.  We want to make people feel comfortable, so we avoid telling them anything that will make them uneasy.  We are so concerned about losing our young people that we never ask them to gaze on the holiness of God or challenge them to lie out that holiness in the childlike fear of God.  We condone materialism, worldiness, and triviality because we have so little sense of an ever-present, infinitely holy God.

Our lives seldom testify that we are willing, at any price, to "buy the truth, and sell it not" (Prov. 23:23).  Dangerous compromises, subtle backsliding, Ephesian coldness, and Laodicean indifference multiply the "unreformedness" of our lives.  How often we esteem ourselves and our reputation above the name of God and His reputation.

Ouch.

Comments

[Melissa]

Ouch is right! Beeke always hits home with me.