God's Anger

   I highly apologize to anyone who bothers to read this blog about not having posted in the past few weeks. I try to at least once a week, but as you can tell I fail a lot. I have been very busy though lately with SAT prep, but that is now out of the way (thank God!) and so I have a little more time on my hands.
  Anyway, I wanted to talk er...write a little about something that has been on my mind a lot lately. And that is God's anger. I think we tend to get too caught up in the "God is a forgiving God thing" that we forget His anger. Don't get me wrong, he is. He is amazingly forgiving. More then we ever deserve. It says in the Psalms;

"For His anger last only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime." (30:5)

  But I think that we tend to forget his anger. We forget how much he abhors sin, and how it pains Him to see us fall. I think we will also use the fact that he is forgiving as an excuse. It makes us not so guilty to do something wrong if we've already been forgiven.  We also forget that God is a jealous God. He is very jealous of our worship and praise and hates it when we give that to something or someone else. Just look at the Isrealites history. They were continually turning away from God to worship false gods, and He got really angry. He sent prophets and strong leaders to bring them back, but often they wouldn't. Or they would but then a year later they would be right back to where they had been. So God would eventually punish them.
  Obviously He doesn't punish us in quite the ways he did to the Israelites. And I think that's where the problem is. Because we're not seeing cities destroyed by God or all the first born males dying we think God doesn't get angry. He does. He is a jealous God. He's jealous of your love. Of your praise and worship. He covets it. It's a sweet smell to him when we bring him glory.
  I'm not trying to say be in cowardly fear that God is going to kill you the moment you do something wrong, I just think that sometimes we need to realize that God does get angry, and he hates our sin even though he does forgive us of it.

Thoughts and/or comments are highly appreciated and welcome. I really would love to hear what you think of this, or if you see any flaws in my reasoning (which I'm sure there are.)

The trip to Cali

For those who don't know, I got to go to California this past week to visit my sister, Angel. It was super awesome fun, I'm actually still here as of the moment, but I'll be flying home tomorrow. Anyway, the pictures are here, and so I thought instead of having Angel email them all to me, I may as well do a post with the pictures, and it'll be so much easier and will actually get done. So, I will not burden you all with long tales of fun in the sun, I'll simply just put a few pictures that highlight the week.

Knitting, of course.

Doughnuggets! These things are amazing!

Eva-Bear. We're best buds.

San Diego Zoo!

The SUNSHINE!!! I don't think it ever got above 65 which was kind of a bummer, but at this point anything is better then CT which is always below 30 with three feet of snow everywhere.

Holding an elephant on my hand... You don't get to do that everyday!

Getting all dressed up and going to a really awesome play of Jane Austen's "Emma". It was made into a musical, and was so cute and funny! Very well done, and it was such a fun night!

Going to Old Town!
And last but not least...

Hanging out with my crazy, awesome, fun, gorgeous, and super fantastic sister Angel! She's so awesome to have put up with me for a week, and it was totally one of the best weeks ever!
Naturally these pictures do not cover everything, and really only give you a glimpse of what a relaxing and fun week I had. It was definitely one of the best birthdays ever!

The Holy Spirit

  Last night I got to go to Angel's bible study with her, and it was a lot of fun. It was really cool to see young married couples come together in fellowship and spend time taking a deeper look into God's word. One of the topics we got talking about though was the Holy Spirit. It was more towards the end though, so we didn't get a long chance to discuss it. Anyway, the dude who led, Mike, was saying how lots of things changed in our relationships with God after Jesus. Such as now we no longer have to make sacrifices to God for our sins because Jesus is our sacrifice. There are no longer walls between God and us like there were with the temples and the holy of holies and all that kind of stuff. Mike also mentioned that now the Holy Spirit is more active too because of Jesus. In the old Testament you only saw the Holy Spirit when miracles were performed. It often says "and the Spirit of God fell upon them and such and such happened". But now the Holy Spirit is continually with us and active inside us.

Well, that got me thinking, and I disagree. First off because you do see cases when the Holy Spirit is living in someone and doesn't just 'come down' for a time. Like when David is anointed king it says, "And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward." So the Spirit was continually with him. And you can find several other passages that are similar to that. So obviously the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit was very present in the Old Testament. But I can also understand where Mike was coming from when he said that, because in Acts you do read a lot "and they were filled with the Holy Spirit." And you do see much more of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament then in the Old. But here's something else I thought. In the Old Testament it was God. They thought God was just God. I don't think, and I can't find  anywhere, where they mention the Trinity in the Old Testament. The people didn't even know of Jesus because he hadn't come yet. But did that mean that Jesus didn't exist? No! he very much did! So maybe they didn't really understand that the 'spirit of God' was the Holy Spirit. 

Blah... I don't know how well I'm getting my point across, and I know I'm saying this a lot out of ignorance and more based on my own thoughts and feeling then on Scripture. But I guess what I'm trying to ask you guys is what do you think? Do you think that the Holy Spirit became more active after Jesus' death and resurrection? or do you think he's always been just as present? I guess what my point is, is that God never changes. We know that. I think that as time goes on God reveals himself more and more to his people. So to the people in the OT, they didn't fully understand the Trinity, or didn't even know that God IS three in one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that now we do fully understand the Trinity. Far from it! But because we already have a foundational truths from all the generations of Christ followers before us, we're beginning to know God more and more. 

So, I need your help! I'm totally going to be searching God's word for more answers, but any thoughts, or questions, or whatever from you all would be awesome! Hope my thoughts came across as some what clear...