October 26, 2015
Poking God
Children often pester, poke and
shove each another just to see what they can get away with. Believers deal with
something similar when people in our lives try to force us to embrace
homosexuality, turn a blind eye to abortion, and accept that all paths lead to god.
These folks want to wear us down with their arguments, but in reality they are
not simply needling us, they are poking God. Paul makes an apt description of such
people. “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Ro 3:18 NIV).
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Gail;
-----The music scale presents tones to the ears from pitches lower than can be heard to those too high to hear. But each note on it is merely a node. Pitches of non-emotive noise exist between all the notes in all ranges. Intensity also can be scaled from imperceptible to unbearable, not only in sound, but also in light, heat, punches on the nose, and nearly everything else. In fact, one of the most useful mental gadgets for being rational and figuring stuff by reasoning is the concept of scale.
-----Does the believer not also poke God? Maybe he does not with the intensity of the gay rights activist. It has become rather common place to find a guy and a gal at church praising and worshipping the Lord and living at their home as if married -as if, but not. Although less intense, it falls upon the same scale as did the Samaritan woman at the well. I never lived with anyone as if married! Lo, neither was I a virgin when I married Char. Oops.
-----This is why I love Romans 3:4 so much. It throws all humanity on the same scale: false. It is just that some are more false than others. Yet, no falsehood will ever enter the eternal, glorious, and perfect kingdom of heaven matter not which end of the scale is its residence. Then, how many members of the church can be seen frantically peeling through layers of their onions desperately digging for the core of their righteousness?
-----Homosexuality, abortion, ascribing “pathway to God” to Tom-foolery, and such are towards the more intense side of the scale of things which irritate God. Look within yourself for examples of things towards the less intense end of the scale. You will find some. For everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore the blood of Christ has extended salvation to any individual choosing to wash in it. How much that moves his reprobate habits towards the diminutive side of their scale is a complex topic, but for this topic, the fact that it may move him greatly towards it, or slightly, is just another scale rather than a rejection or acceptance. The existence of his sincerity to his call for salvation is key, but again, the intensity of sincerity falls upon another scale. Nothing of this temporal world is perfectly good or evil, right or wrong, strong or weak, etc., except the hand of the Lord holding His saints of scaled behaviors.
-----But that’s an individual perspective. Corporate perspective is similar, but different. God never promised to save any two or more people corporately. We are saved individually. Yet, there are corporate blessings to groups of folks who together practice righteousness the best they can, humbling themselves to God and one another, learning righteousness and practicing what they are learning. This too falls upon a scale with learning and practicing righteousness at one end and learning and practicing evil at the other. Individual salvation aside, a culturally defined group of people is not only viewable at a particular location upon that scale, but their direction of movement is also discernable. As you pointed out, our drift is towards evil. And we relax in the comforts of ever increasing deceit, thinking and claiming that God has our backs. But as God has demonstrated many times in history, there is a point on the scale across which He will not step with a people. This is why the behavior of your neighbor in his own bedroom matters to you: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” (Ps 127:1) With ISIS on the prowl, I tend to desire a lot of watching on the Lord’s part while living in strong houses. It takes community effort to get that.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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