Sep
1
Acting Badly
Filed Under Devotional
I am often at odds with my Lord. I say this with the understanding that I do not question His authority or His right to make His decisions, but rather how I react to His discipline. When God makes a decision regarding my life, I often rebel because it is my nature to do so and, usually, it’s just a knee-jerk reaction. I believe that God knows what He is doing, but there are times when my behavior certainly does not reflect that belief. I have memories of my mother trying to explain my behavior. She’d say things like, “I don’t know why he’d do such a thing. He knows better,” or, “We did not raise him to act that way.” In most cases, my bad behavior was something my mother could not have imagined, so it was obvious she didn’t raise me to act that way. It’s just in my nature to act badly when I don’t think first.
God chooses to be just, that is to say, fair. He is only bound by the rules He made for Himself and one of those rules is to be fair. You do the crime and consequences will follow. It’s not a matter of fitting a punishment to your action, though. One person jumps off a cliff and breaks an arm. Another does it and breaks his neck. One learns a lesson and the other dies. God is fair in that, if you jump off a cliff, there will be consequences. “Unfair!!” we cry. “Why should one live and one die?” That misses the point. The point is to not jump off of cliffs. “But, it’s my right to jump off cliffs. It’s a free country!” Fine, go ahead and jump, but there will be consequences.
“For there is no partiality with God.” Romans 2:11
Disregarding help from God, namely the good sense to not jump off a cliff, means it’s your fault, not God’s.
“It is your destruction, O Israel,
That you are against Me, against your help.” Hosea 13:9
Finally, the very idea that any man questions God’s judgement is proof enough that He’s dumb enough to jump off of cliffs.
“On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it?” Romans 9:20
Come on, guys. It ain’t rocket science. It’s Biblical.