Friday, December 9, 2016

The Patience of God with Spiritual Blindness

Friday, December 9, 2016
The Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  Psalm 146:8a(NLT)     
And remember, our Lord’s patience gives people time to be saved.  This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him— speaking of these things in all of his letters.  Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture.  And this will result in their destruction.  You already know these things, dear friends. So be on guard; then you will not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing.  Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.                                      2 Peter 3:15-18(NLT)
I have watched perhaps a half-dozen movies over the years where a blind person receives his or her sight back; it’s always portrayed as a high moment of joy and immediate celebration.
But what if that moment when your eyes were opened you beheld something quite different than expected?  What if your new sight included being tied up on the railroad track on a trestle bridge, 400 feet in the air, with no way to move left or right, and a train is less than a hundred yards away, barreling towards you at full speed?
This is the condition Peter describes.  Paul’s writings in the hands of uninformed and unstable people had become twisted caricatures of Scripture’s intention, and this crooked path is the highway to destruction…Hell.
Peter cautions each of us to be on guard that we might not be carried along to that destination.  We need to guard our own hearts, understanding that God is patient towards those who are distorting His genuine message, providing time for them to have their eyes opened.
I have watched the change of posture and attitude of the LGBTQ movement over the years, from trembling, tentative stepping gingerly out of the closet for fear of reprisal, to full-blown reprisal against anyone who would question their sexual aberration.  The mutation of this movement, going from wanting nothing to do with Christianity, has insidiously crept, cell-by-cancerous cell all the way to this current day desire to possess the pulpit, legal same-sex partnerships (I refuse to call it “marriage”), and now borders on the “new normative” – it is more than culturally legal, it has become culturally acceptable, even fashionable
In fact, culture has been so captivated, to speak a word even remotely suggestive that you do not support homosexuality borders on hate-speech.  Can it be far off before you will spend time in jail for even thinking there might be something wrong with other than heterosexuality?
This devotional time is not a forum for an in-depth recounting of how twisted our culture is regarding sexuality (there may not be enough paper and ink, or megabytes to even begin that tome).  I must simply name sexual aberration for what it is:  sin. 
And that is certainly not limited to the LGBTQ community; heterosexuals have enough on our own record to fill several libraries!
The whole point here is a call for prayer that blinded eyes may be opened.  Like John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, who had his eyes opened to the obscenity of human trafficking, and gave up his slave ship, there are many chains of sin that can be broken when spiritual blindness receives the touch of Jesus.

For You Today

We call for payer and patience; after all, think about where you would be today if God were not patient with you?
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!
NOTES


[i] Title image: Fondazione Cariplo, via Wikimedia Commons

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