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Lou Coleman
By Lou Coleman
Well boo, boo, that’s what happens when you abandon your first love [Jesus]. Scripture says this: “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, but ye have set at naught all my counsel…I will show you [my] back, and not [my] face…” I will even laugh at your calamity. I will mock you when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm and your calamity comes on like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come on you, then you will call on Me but I will not answer. You will seek Me diligently but you shall not find Me. Because you hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. You would not accept My counsel, you spurned all My reproof. So you shall eat of the fruit of your own way and be satiated with your own devices, seeing that you no longer desired My company” [Proverbs 1:24-31].
I tell you there is nothing worse can be said of a child of God but that “the presence of the Lord departed.” In His place comes a spirit of hopelessness and emptiness, [1 Samuel 22:8]. To the sons of Israel, God said in [Judges 10], “You have forsaken me and served other gods, therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen, let them deliver you in the time of your distress.” I’m done with you! For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? I tell you drifting away from God is infinitely dangerous.
Listen; there is what you could call consequential wrath. Consequential wrath is the sowing and reaping wrath; you live a certain kind of life and you set in motion certain forces that will produce judgment. But then there is another kind of wrath and that is the wrath of abandonment. It is that wrath exhibited by God when He turns His back on a society [Romans 1:24 to 32]. In [Hosea 4:17] we are reminded that there comes a time when God abandons men. God comes to a point where God will say enough is enough and He will allow us to go our own way, to the consequences of our own sinful choices. Of the Pharisees Jesus said, “Let them alone, they are blind leaders of the blind,” [Matthew 15:14]. The most terrifying words “Let them alone.” It’s a frightening thing to think about that. Frightening thing to think that you might be abandoned by God, that the opportunity for salvation is past, that the day of grace is over.
You may be wondering …is there any hope? Well Jesus said in [Psalms, 81:16], “O that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways. I would turn from abandoning them, from giving them over to their own sinful choices to defending them and protecting them and punishing their enemies and I would feed them with the finest of the wheat and with honey from the rock I would satisfy them.” What are you waiting for…? Take the next exit and go back to your first love [Jesus]!
