Tuesday; March 25

Have you ever thought about how God disciplines us?  Okay, maybe a different way to ask this is how can God punish us?  Many of us believe in an eternal hell as absolute spiritual punishment, but have you given much thought to what He can do in the here and now?  It is tempting to envision God sending some horrific plague on us to try to teach us a lesson, but I think there is something else He can do and may do more often than we might realize.  What if God were to just go “hands off” on us and leave us to our own consequences?  On the surface, this might not seem like much of a punishment, but think about how efficient mankind is at messing things up on our own?  With God’s help, we can be successful in living a good life, but when we are left to our own, we are pretty much destined to make a mess out of it.

When Paul discussed God’s relationship with mankind, he described ungodly thought then observed, “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 1:24-25).   The phrase “God gave them over” is used several other times in this section and it seems to indicate that God said, “Okay, if that’s what you want – go for it and see where you end up!”.  Honestly, this type of punishment tends to scare me more than some kind of pestilence, because in our human arrogance, we are apt to dig ourselves deeper into trouble without realizing what we are doing to ourselves and our society.  We may think we are smart; but the result of human logic is sin and separation from spiritual purity.

Is our world struggling?  Could it be that God is letting us “do it ourselves” in hopes that, eventually, we’ll realize we need Him and return to His caring control?

Think About It! 


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