Who God Is: Honest.

It's amazing when God speaks honestly into you life. Even though it forces you to see the terrible things you have been hiding from, or running from: God always speaks mercy and grace into the situation.

Mercy : removing punishment that you deserve. 

Grace : giving blessing that you don't deserve. 

This happened to me just yesterday morning, as I opened my Bible. I have a bookmark at Ezekiel 20, and the highlighted verse lept off the page. 

This is a honest statement. Nothing is held back. Yet the purpose of honesty is relationship. "You will KNOW that I am the Lord". God is promising himself here. He is promising to be vulnerable, to build that bridge between himself and me. 

And then the mercy. Let me show you another translation:

I regularly struggle with guilt and shame. These feeling say that God doesn't want to know me, because of the things I've done or the things I haven't done well enough. Completely untrue.

God always wants to be near, wants to say hello, wants to help us heal, in every moment.

Because he relates to us out of who he is.