BECOMING CALLOUSED

I Was Just Thinking About – BECOMING CALLOUSED.

There are all kinds of exploitation and individual subjugation (enslavement) taking place throughout the world. There is human exploitation; suppression and oppression of various people groups; abandoned and unwanted children; orphanages; and street people. In a devotional, Sin’s Cure, (September 14, 2017), Dr. A. W. Tozer shares the following: “Had Hitler been a good and gentle man, six million Jews now dead would be living; had Stalin been a Christian, several million Russian farmers would be alive who now molder in the earth. Consider the thousands of little children who died of starvation because one man had a revengeful spirit; think of the millions of displaced persons who wander over the earth even today unable to locate mother or father or wife or child because men with hate in their hearts managed to get into places of power; think of the young men of almost every nation, sick with yearning for home and loved ones, who guard the empty wastes and keep watch on frozen hills in the far corners of the earth, all because one ruler is greedy, another ambitious; because one statesman is cowardly and another jealous.”

If we look at the way professing Christians treat one another and the apparent indifference within the structured Church, it should not be surprising that the groups identified as the “Nones” and “Dones” have dropped out of the cultural-oriented Church. Paul asked a very poignant rhetorical question in I Corinthians 14:8, “If the trumpet sounds a muffled call, who will prepare for battle?” The NLT renders this verse: “If the bugler doesn’t sound a clear call, how will the soldiers know they are being called to battle?” Could that be the current cause for negative reaction within the cultural-oriented Church today?

Another factor that enters into the overall indifference is callousness on the part of professing Christians and the Churches they nominally support. Paul wrote to Timothy and reminded him of a stark reality within organized religion, II Timothy 3:1-9. In I Timothy 1:5-6, Paul shares this cautionary word: “The goal is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk.” Paul also indicates, II Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” Could it be that we have arrived at this point and some don’t even recognize it nor are they aware of where we are and how we got there?

Prayerfully – consider these things with me.

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