Overwhelming grace doesn’t always lead to overwhelming gratitude:
“So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.” (Nehemiah 9:25–26 ESV)
It’s difficult to bless a sinful people.
We see this again and again in the Old Testament – and we’re starting to see it again now in the North American church. Great blessing from God should result in great gratitude toward God – but often, contrary to expectation – it leads to arrogance, self-indulgence, spiritual neglect and moral decline.
The only cure for this is affliction:
“Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer.” (Nehemiah 9:27 ESV)
Brothers and sisters, let us repent, as individuals, as families, as churches – as nations even – before this remedial action becomes inevitable.
Lord help!
Pastor Paul Carter
To listen to the most recent episodes of Pastor Paul’s Into The Word devotional podcast on the TGC Canada website see here. You can also find it on iTunes. To access the entire library of available episodes see here.