JUDGMENT
OF GOD: PRESENT; SPIRITUAL DECLINE

Rarely does God send His judgment dramatically. I have wondered if we might learn our lessons of humility and obedience more quickly if God were to resist a man as one soldier to another, with the clash of sword and the letting of blood?

But it does not work that way. When God resists a man for the sins of his spirit and attitude, a slow, inward spiritual degeneration will take place as a signal of the judgment that has come. A slow hardening that comes from unwillingness to yield will result in cynicism. The Christian joy will disappear and there will be no more fruits of the Spirit. That man will sour as a jar of fruit sours—and it is not an exaggeration to say that the man who has earned the resistance of God will continue to sour bitterly in his own juice.

Psalm 32:3–5; Galatians 5:22–23; 1 Peter 5:5

I Call It Heresy!, 106.

K