Consequence

 Rebellion has consequences. So do disobedience, obfuscation, and a divided heart. You can tell when someone is just going through the motions and when they are wholly invested in the endeavor they are pursuing. Usually, if it’s a humdrum sort of thing, the fresh faces are the new hires who haven’t gotten chewed up and spit out by the system yet, who are still bright-eyed and adorably innocent vis-à-vis the world they’ve wandered into.

They have yet to discover that there is intrigue afoot everywhere and people trying to sabotage strangers just to make themselves look better than they are. It doesn’t have to be a multi-national corporation or a six-figure job; even the third shifters with the mullets and the face tattoos are getting in on the act.

We like to believe that people are generally agreeable and easygoing, but that’s only until you poke them in a tender spot or hit upon a long-held belief and challenge it. It’s not as though you’re trying to be contrarian just for the sake of it, but if you ask me a question, and I tell you the truth, don’t get angry at me for telling you the truth you asked for.

The people of Jeremiah’s day were good at that. They all wanted to hear a word from the Lord until they heard it and realized it didn’t match up with the plans they had for themselves or that God didn’t see them in quite the grand light they saw themselves. Then their reaction became volatile and unhinged, accusing the person they went to for help of having a hidden agenda.

Raise a hand when you can see the breakdown in logic: I’ve already decided my life course; I just need God to confirm and validate it. I’m not looking for instruction or direction; I’m looking for confirmation and validation.

If God, perchance, points to a different path, then we get angry and morose, despondent even, because we thought God understood us better than this, and now He’s telling us to do something we had no plans of doing.

That’s the whole thing about obedience, isn’t it? When God commands, we obey, even if what He commands is disquieting for the flesh. Before you start earnestly praying for God to do His will in your life, you must be prepared for the possibility that your will and His will not harmonize. If this turns out to be the case, you must likewise be ready to abandon your will for His; otherwise, don’t even start.

2 Peter 2:20-21, “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of this world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.”

“I need direction.”

“Go that way.”

“That’s not the way I want to go.”

“But it’s the direction God wants you to go.”

If you’ve already made up your mind about something, don’t tempt God by asking for His input, then still do whatever you want to do even though it’s contrary to the instruction God provided. I have a friend who constantly asks for advice and never takes the advice I give him.

“Mike, do you think I should buy a pickup truck from the eighties with two gas tanks on it?”

“Two gas tanks aren’t what you want on a car, especially if gas is expensive.”

“Thanks for the advice. By the way, I got a new truck, and it has two gas tanks.”

We cannot go before God with a predetermined outcome in our minds. That’s not the way God does business. Where You lead, I will follow, has become You’d better lead me where I want to go. We make demands of God that we have no right to make. We think we can get away with this because the relationship dynamic has been flipped on its ear regarding who He is and who we are.

It is another tactic the enemy uses to keep individuals from walking in God’s will and feeling no compunction about doing so.

I’ve done the exegesis, believe me. I even went back to the original Greek, and surprisingly, being highly favored does not mean that the rules don’t apply to you. It’s like that one person you know who uses certain words in the wrong context so often that you get the feeling they don’t really know what the words mean.

I get that same feeling when I hear people try to justify rebellion and disobedience by insisting that due to their status of being one who is highly favored, they can disregard the will and word of God with abandon.

That doesn’t mean what you think it means. I know; bummer. You were all set to order a t-shirt that said little god and everything. If the angels who left their proper domain were not spared judgment, what makes us think we will be if we do likewise?

The consequence of disobedience is nothing to scoff at. The angels chose to leave their own abode, thereby committing themselves to everlasting chains under darkness until the great day of judgment. Had they remained faithful and stayed in their proper domain, the chains and judgment would not have been required.

God did not spare the angels who sinned. He will not spare this generation just because it thinks He should.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.