Romans 9: What trips up people about God.

 Ro 9:32 Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone,
 Ro 9:33 as it is written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him will not be put to shame."

If you only read the 9th chapter of Romans, you would conclude that God just picks out everyone who is going to be saved and lets the rest just get ready for hell.  In fact, some of that type of thinking was involved in the way I grew up--God was in control, there was nothing you could do about it except make sure your kids were raised in the faith.

But the last two verses concludes with the real issue at hand--pursuing God with faith verses pursuing God with works.  Simply put, we can come to God with nothing but the assurance that He is Good and God and worthy of our worship, that He does what He says and He cares about us.

Or we can approach Him with the idea that we can offer Him a dedicated, sacrificial life, doing extremely good things (however our personal code describes them) and making an impression on God to the point where He overlooks any short comings we may have. 

The first approach is the way of faith--focusing on God and what He is doing and has done through Christ.   This is the only approach that works in the end. 

The second approach is trusting in our own good works.  Its fault lies in two things:  1. we can never in ourselves be absolutely perfect--the requirement for dwelling with a perfectly Holy God  2. this approach that focuses on all the good we are doing is a subtle form of idol worship--the idol being ourselves and the good we are doing.  The result then, is not true worship of God, but pride, which is of course, the original sin.

It is the great stumbling block of faith and total trust in God that offends many people who are busy trying to please Him with their morals and activities.  Works do have their place in faith, but they do not add anything to convince God to save us or have a relationship with us.

Even people of faith, Christians can get tripped up by this, engaging in good activities and evaluating others by their performance and losing sight of how all of us on our own don't stack up to anything compared to God.

God is good--He is powerful, amazing and un"tame"able.  He does not fit into our view of Him and He is great.  He chooses to love us and that is the only reason we have hope.