I was praying this morning and I asked God this question, "Is Your coming judgment inevitable?" As of late our church has entered a season of prayer for the coming judgment that God is outlining for America. I've written about this in the last few weeks of what God has been revealing. It doesn't seem to be a pretty picture at all in the onset. The messages are saturate with judgment and calamity. There are dreams of decimated cities and fire and chaos. Rioting because of our selfish society is coming and a full out economic collapse is on our horizon. So, our prayers are the prayers of Habakkuk, "Remember mercy in judgment."
My prayers have been turned to pray for mercy more than anything. And in praying for mercy my heart went naturally to this question, "Is Your judgment inevitable?" God has answered my prayer. His answer is "Yes." His judgment is inevitable. It is coming and it will happen just as He has revealed. His answer came with an explanation, which is something we don't always get. Does God need to explain Himself? Certainly not. But, in this He wants to. He wants to explain why this judgment is upon us. Have you ever jerked a child up and punished them without explaining to them why they are being punished? If you have, the punishment was wasted. The punishment serves the purpose of teaching and often it is a result of lessons we chose not to learn. We force the corrective hand out of continually "not listening" to the teaching.
The coming judgment of God is bittersweet.
It is sweet because God is the One doing the judging. If ever I'm to be judged let it be by an all knowing judge who can rightly discern the evidence against me. Let it be a judge also who loves me and won't sacrifice mercy for emotion, but One who is able to judge perfectly. Most likely the only fair trial anyone will ever receive.
It is sweet because humility and holiness is His desired outcome for us. If this is His desire for us, and we become more intimate with Him and we are corrected to His path and are "right-ed" then what can be more sweet than being so close to such a Deity? The outcome is then sweet. There is nothing more desirable in this world's existence than to walk closely with Him and to be a friend of our cosmic Creator.
However, the judgment is also bitter. It is bitter because God takes no delight in judging sinners. We are forcing God's hand into something that is not delightful to Him. This judgment would be avoidable if we just repent and turn from the ways of this wicked world. He would spare us the judgment if we would repent. Think of Nineveh. The judgment is inevitable because America will not repent. We are too comfortable in the warm bed of Mammon. We won't leave this god's bed of pleasure.
I remember in 1990 as a small boy at an international church meeting of our denomination that there was of course a squabble going on in the church that had the church divided down the middle. The Holy Spirit issued a strong ardent warning to repent and turn to Him. The warning was so final and severe that it shut the meeting of 10,000 up completely and there was silence all across the place. The sense quickly became that God was referring not to "us" but to "them". God wanted "them" to repent. That was the sense on both sides of the issue. It stroked each sides righteous indignation with the other half of the argument. The attitude was "See! God wants 'them' to repent." As a much older boy, I see that God was referring to "both" sides of the argument. His attention was far from the issue at hand and was fixed upon the rebellious heart of the church at large. He had a lot more on His table of important issues that we were completely segregated from. Business as usual for us...
America will not repent and change her ways. She must be humbled by God's compulsion. He has been trying to get us to repent for decades and we've completely ignored Him. Repenting to us has always been for the "other guy", never ourselves. We are so blinded by the worship of our gods - as my pastor put it yesterday, we are so comfortable with them that they have become the new normal - that we can't see that we are the ones polishing the idol for our Sunday morning worship service.
The judgment is inevitable because our refusal to repent is unwavering. God please temper wrath with mercy since it's on its way.
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