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Greetings in the Lord!
Recently the Lord has been talking to me about false prophets and "leaders" in the Body of Christ leading people astray. And even though the strong hand of the Lord has come against them in a variety of ways, they chose to not recognize it as such and move forward callously without Him, continuing in their ways and not acknowledging sin in their lives. It is an arrogant disregard for the Lord and His corrective measures. I had a student like this before. At first meeting I could see his blatant disrespect for me as the teacher and after a couple of times of addressing his poor behavior, I sent him out of the class for being incorrigible. That is, he refused to be corrected or reform his ways--because he had acted like this so often it was now a bad habit of his to disrespect authority figures. Many Christians are incorrigible like this, too. So after a short time I went to talk to him and ask if he was ready to rejoin the class, but he still was defiant, so I let him stay out there. After more time outside he finally was willing to be respectful in class and rejoined without further issues.
In addition to the stubborn resistance to repentance of an incorrigible person, there is another problem that tends to accompany incorrigible people--they are prideful. Pride is dangerous spiritually for many reasons but the first thing it does is begin to blind people--they cannot see their own faults or situation anymore. They will not have understanding or insight to properly digest situations or how to apply God's ways to their lives. They just go on day after day, using worldly logic and emotion to feel their way through the day. And if they are a popular and good-looking and educated person, who knows, they might even make their own way into a position of leadership and make lots of money and feel good about themselves---even though spiritually they are void and dulled, lonely from the many days of being away from the presence of the Lord. They will become fat on the world and its pleasures to try and satisfy their spiritual hunger and loneliness.
That leads me to today's verse from Isaiah 9:8-10:4. It is a passage of rebuke to Israel because of their incorrigible behavior. The Lord finally announces to them that He will cut off those misguiding leaders, who "issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice...making widows their prey" and to "the prophets who teach lies." The rest of the passage talks about the nature of the Lord's wrath to come against them:
"the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; no one will spare his brother. On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied. Each will feed on the flesh of his own offspring." Eventually all the unrepentant will go into "captivity" or will be spiritually oppressed in some way.
That is the nature of the Lord's corrective measures to His people--they eventually go into captivity after they have shrugged off all the previous attempts of the Lord to draw them back to Him. And you know what, you can't really fear something like that until you've gone through it! The nice thing is, there are some lessons the wise only need to learn once....
~Be blessed and be a blessing.
Recently the Lord has been talking to me about false prophets and "leaders" in the Body of Christ leading people astray. And even though the strong hand of the Lord has come against them in a variety of ways, they chose to not recognize it as such and move forward callously without Him, continuing in their ways and not acknowledging sin in their lives. It is an arrogant disregard for the Lord and His corrective measures. I had a student like this before. At first meeting I could see his blatant disrespect for me as the teacher and after a couple of times of addressing his poor behavior, I sent him out of the class for being incorrigible. That is, he refused to be corrected or reform his ways--because he had acted like this so often it was now a bad habit of his to disrespect authority figures. Many Christians are incorrigible like this, too. So after a short time I went to talk to him and ask if he was ready to rejoin the class, but he still was defiant, so I let him stay out there. After more time outside he finally was willing to be respectful in class and rejoined without further issues.
In addition to the stubborn resistance to repentance of an incorrigible person, there is another problem that tends to accompany incorrigible people--they are prideful. Pride is dangerous spiritually for many reasons but the first thing it does is begin to blind people--they cannot see their own faults or situation anymore. They will not have understanding or insight to properly digest situations or how to apply God's ways to their lives. They just go on day after day, using worldly logic and emotion to feel their way through the day. And if they are a popular and good-looking and educated person, who knows, they might even make their own way into a position of leadership and make lots of money and feel good about themselves---even though spiritually they are void and dulled, lonely from the many days of being away from the presence of the Lord. They will become fat on the world and its pleasures to try and satisfy their spiritual hunger and loneliness.
That leads me to today's verse from Isaiah 9:8-10:4. It is a passage of rebuke to Israel because of their incorrigible behavior. The Lord finally announces to them that He will cut off those misguiding leaders, who "issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice...making widows their prey" and to "the prophets who teach lies." The rest of the passage talks about the nature of the Lord's wrath to come against them:
"the land will be scorched and the people will be fuel for the fire; no one will spare his brother. On the right they will devour, but still be hungry; on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied. Each will feed on the flesh of his own offspring." Eventually all the unrepentant will go into "captivity" or will be spiritually oppressed in some way.
That is the nature of the Lord's corrective measures to His people--they eventually go into captivity after they have shrugged off all the previous attempts of the Lord to draw them back to Him. And you know what, you can't really fear something like that until you've gone through it! The nice thing is, there are some lessons the wise only need to learn once....
~Be blessed and be a blessing.
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