Yesterday I taught Sunday school for a close friend who has just recently had a baby. The lesson wreaked havoc on my thoughts before I taught it and it has lingered even after.
The main point was that believers can become numb to hearing from God. The material compared modern day believers to bible-day lepers....except without the oozing sores and rotting flesh.
Leprosy was a devastating disease that separated people from society and marked them as outcasts. Lepers would lose fingers, toes, feet, even the nose from their faces. On top of looking disfigured, the disease also attacked their nerve endings so that those infected could feel nothing.
Imagine feeling nothing. Nothing at all.
These people would harm themselves even more because they couldn't feel when they were hurting themselves.
So how might Christ followers do this today? Well the parallel is that we don't heed God's warnings and instruction in His Word. In fact we ignore them. So we spend our lives in disobedience. Each bad decision makes us numb to the next one that comes along and so forth.
I have had periods of this in my own life. I would become angry with God for decisions I had made. Then I would not do the things that would please Him just to get back at Him. The more I disobeyed the easier it was to disobey again...and again...and again.
After a while of this kind of living a person gets numb. The have cut themselves off and no longer feel anything. Not the pain of hurt or even the exhilaration of joy. All feeling goes away.
I have been asking God to keep me fully awake and alert to areas of my life where I consistently disobey Him. I have been numb before and it was a dark place. I never want to return there again. Staying tender to God's voice through prayer and His Word help us avoid this nasty pitfall, as well as a humble and contrite spirit, which should always been found in us.
Today I caught a real-life picture of my stubborn 4 year old dealing with this exact issue over potato chips.
Zeke loves chips. Any kind...he doesn't discriminate. Cheetos, Doritos, and Sun Chips always top his list of favorites. He will even choose chips for dessert. The rest of us might opt for ice cream or a cookie. He stays with his own brand of carbohydrates and it is almost always chips.
He saw a new pack of Pringles in our pantry that I had recently bought for Shep. They were labeled "hot and spicy." He begged me for some and so I agreed to let him have a few. I figured that he would not want them after he tasted how hot they were.
I put some water next to him in preparation of what I knew was to come.
Sure enough his little hands went up and he began kind of fanning his face. "Mama, these are too hot."
I replied, "Drink some of your water buddy. Those are hot. You don't need to eat anymore."
After taking a big gulp and whining some more he put another chip in his mouth.
The exact same reaction occurred.
More fanning. More crying. More gulping water.
I said, "Zeke, stop eating the chips. They are too hot for you."
Through tears he said, "No mom. I like them. Maybe if I turn the chip over to the other side it won't be hot."
Well you can see where this is going and where it went.
STUBBORN.
Aren't we all?
Even if something is clearly causing us pain we will continue in our quest if it is something we think we want.
Thank goodness Zeke isn't numb to pain.
That pain in his mouth was alerting him to stop.
God allows pain like that many times.
Let's not be stubborn in our disobedience.
Instead let's be stubborn in our faith.
Zechariah 7:11 "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears."
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