This update is from a recent meeting of ASK Daegu. Each member contributed something to the message that follows. We pray that our group encourages you in the same way that it encouraged all of us.
Read Proverbs 7
From childhood we naturally exhibit a desire to rebel. We see a rule and immediately seek to break it. There is ironically within the human heart a desire for absolute truths alongside a desire to create truths of our own that satisfy our desires regardless of the consequences. Sin amplifies our desire to create truths, and left to our own devices we will ultimately listen, follow and destroy ourselves because of them. The truths that we create for ourselves, grounded in wisdom that we deem worthy, is doomed to lead us astray every time. Brokenness yields brokenness and remains broken.
In the same way that we possess a natural talent for rule-breaking, we likewise possess a distaste for correction. As a result of sin, we are born deceived into thinking that we now possess the knowledge of good and evil that Satan promised us in the garden in the beginning. Therefore, any challenge to that reality immediately creates in us a fire of resentment toward whatever or whoever is challenging our authority. For many, God is at the receiving end of this wrath.
However, by the grace of God we are given in scripture a reasonable, just and loving voice that does not discipline or correct for authority’s sake. What we find is a God that disciplines, corrects and warns for our sake. Deep down we all know our weaknesses are exploited on a daily basis. God does too. His desire for us to turn from the corner that will undoubtedly bring us further into sin and despair is not to deprive us but to save us. The fallacy of human wisdom is precisely that. It is human and therefore completely incapable of discernment untainted by sin and disorder. In man’s eyes, joy follows obedience, and the devastation and depravation of the entire world follows. In God’s eyes, joy follows obedience to the words of His son Jesus, as a new life and a new world made in His image are revealed.
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