Romans 1:18-23

Dear Father God I thank you so much for this time we have to share with you and each other today. Lord help me to focus on what is important today, help me to not be distracted by stress and pain and family woes, help me to focus in on you. Lord I thank you so much for my sister Angela and her willingness to spend time in the world with me, I glean so much from our time together. Lord you know the needs of both or our families and I ask you to overflow our cups. Amen

1:18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who push the truth away from themselves. (My bible has a side note "or people who prevent the truth from being known.")

God's anger is poured out on those who prevent the truth from being known or who push the truth away from themselves. I am thinking that there are many in our culture who will be shown the wrath of God when the time comes. God is holy and just, loving and forgiving  yet his anger is for those who prevent his true nature from being known. I love that this makes him angry, it shows us his nature which is justly and good.

1:19-20 For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. (Manifested in them) God has put this knowledge in their hearts. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.

I really loved your view on this verse. It is hard not to take the view point of judging those who look around and see the wonder around them and yet they believe all of it was just an accident or part of chaos theory. I want to know more specifically what did God put into their hearts as "knowledge"? Do you think it is your conscious or the knowledge of right and wrong. Is it the wonder of nature? Hard to say isn't it?  I look at this verse and believe that even those who have not heard the word of God might be saved if God desires it. That those who died before Christ was on the cross might be saved, those in the deep jungle might be saved also. 

21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. The result was that their minds became dark and confused. 

I think left to our own imaginations we could make God into something very scary and dark because our imaginations are tainted by our sinful nature. God is indescribably big, powerful, creator of all things and if left to our sinful imaginations of coarse he would be vengeful, mighty forceful and in love with power. God is all those things but he is also HOLY, sinless, full of love and mercy all of which our human heart and mind can not grasp.  

22 Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools instead. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, or birds and animals and snakes.

Our little minds can not comprehend the every-living glorious God we like to keep God contained in a little package, make him familiar like a bird or an animal. We are fools. I am guilty of this myself, not in worshiping an object but of obsessing over an idea or not giving my cares and worries up to God, thinking I can handle this. Thinking God can not possibly handle all of my burdens. I become the fool because I can not carry my burdens, I need God to take them away.