Think About It

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 ...