Hosea 5:15 “Then I will go back to my place
until they admit their guilt.
And they will seek my face;
in their misery they will earnestly seek me.”

Time and time again the Bible records God allowing people to suffer the consequences of their rebellion against Him until those consequences drive them to seek Him again. Sometimes things that we see as great disasters are actually God’s mercy, seeking to put people into situations where they will recognize that He is their only hope. Today it is not considered politically correct to even imply that active sin has consequences, but that is all part of the devil’s disinformation campaign. Any time you are in a difficult place, the first thing to do is turn to God and ask, “How have I contributed to getting here?” And then, we have to be humble enough to listen to His reply. Sometimes the answer will simply be that we live in a fallen world, and that means we will have trouble. (John 16:33) However, for individuals and for society as a whole, often the answer is that we have ignored God and gone about our own way, placing other things ahead of Him. Right now the US is in a crisis, and I personally think God is trying to wake His children up. We have coasted for far too long, dulled by our very affluence, accepting societal sins that 50 years ago, or even less, would have caused a major outcry. Those who are actively serving evil are running rampant, and the picture isn’t pretty at all. The thing is, all those things were already there, but they weren’t accepted as normative. Nowadays we constantly hear the term, “new normal,” mostly in reference to the pandemic, but God’s people need to rise up and say that rampant sin is NOT normal, and stand firm against it. More and more people are rightly saying that what America needs is a spiritual revival, but it will only come when His people snap out of their stupor and get active in seeking Him.

It’s easy for me to point fingers, but I’ve done my own share of accepting “societal norms.” I haven’t been consistent in evaluating things by God and His Word. As a result, my calls to repentance have been muted, and I will have to answer for that. I am not to be deliberately combative, but I am never to back down from God’s standards of morality. It has become a truism, but I’ve got to “hate the sin and love the sinner,” precisely because God has done that toward me. Frankly, it’s not easy. Rants against sin very often come across as rants against those who practice it. I try to be very careful in my classes when I cover the subject of abortion, because statistically speaking, the probability that there are people in my classes who have been involved in it is high. Right now homosexuality is very much in the spotlight, even including relatives. I am to love such people, accepting them as individuals but not condoning their sin. We had a transsexual person coming to church who wanted me to say that God accepted him as a woman. I couldn’t say that, but I did tell, and show, him that God accepts him as a person. I’ve got to keep speaking the truth in love, whether people’s response is as I would like or not.

Father, I don’t have the wisdom to do it all right. Help me love, and hate, as You do. Help me love those who are deceived and pray for them, but not let them pull me into accepting their deception as all right. May I be Your agent in destroying the works of the devil, (1 John 3:8) setting people free and establishing Your kingdom, for Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!