Who is God and who am I?

We were confronted with these questions as the basis of our first weeks teaching, which happened to be taught by a man from the same town in Australia that I lived in two years ago. I was incredibly aggravated the entire week, each new idea he brought up seemed wrong to me. Maybe not wrong, but defiantly not the 'right' that I was sure was, right. After drilling him with question after question, and dwelling on his ideas about God and the scripture he had backing it, I have had some personal revelation about God. My mind has been racing about a side, or better put, a whole, of God that I've yet to venture to. I believe God is unfathomable, but we can see His character and nature through many ways. I think many people give God a partial introduction, I see people, including myself, leaning towards and holding on to only several characteristics of God. He is the ultimate judge, He is holy, fierce, righteous, He created everything and made the rules of this world. People take that and picture someone always watching and judging our every move, our every sin, and we feel that we ought not sin, and we should live right because of Gods wrath. They make Gods laws a religious game, where God is not the center, but not sinning is the center, and with that, comes a shade of judgment on the other side of the spectrum. Freedom Sinners, is how the teacher put it. Freedom Sinners concentrate on Gods forgiveness, Gods mercy, and love. They live their life with the attitude of, 'I can do whatever i want and God will forgive and forget it'. and the more they are judged for their actions, the more they want to exercise their 'rights'. Which leads the legalistic to concentrate even harder on the letter of the law. This isn't what our teacher was saying to the tee, but it is part of what I got out of it. He pushed that the right way to live isn't a 'balance' between these two distorted views of how and why to live, but that both are wrong, they both make sin and self, the center, one hides sin, while the other embraces it. The concentration is no longer on God, but on the actions, either making them everything, or nothing. I use to think that when i was close to God, or living right, I was not sinning, or balancing my life perfectly. But, when I really looked at it, I was still concentrated on the sin aspect of living right. I feel challenged to keep turning from sin, but now i have a new task in stead of just waiting to fall again, turn from sin, and to God! I’ve been introduced to the idea that the truest form of freedom is experienced under obeying Gods Laws. God as a whole, God who is not in conflict with himself, God who is all holy and all love. God is good, in all aspects. He's not waiting over us waiting to strike us down when we sin, but rather wanting more of our trust, more of our time, more of our hearts, and when we do fall, he wants us to allow him to pick us up and come back. God’s love is perfect and pure and he longs for us. He longs for me and longs for you. This message was a great one to have since this weeks teaching is on worship. I’ll post about that later. God Bless.