Today’s reading: Ezekiel 14; 2 Corinthians 8
How often people turn to God in times of struggle, fear, pain, or crisis, who are otherwise disinterested in knowing or following Him, says something to me about a spiritual reality that they recognize, even if they refuse to accept it.
We see this happening in Ezekiel 14, where the elders have come to Ezekiel to hear from God, but, far from encouraging their coming to Him, God calls them out for their faith in their idols rather than Him. On the one hand, it begs the question why they are there in the first place if they want to follow their idols rather than God, but I think that answer is obvious, God is the one who can actually do something. God is speaking through Ezekiel in a way that none of their idols is speaking, and God has acted in history in a way that none of their idols has acted. They want to be able to live and operate spiritually, however they want to, without any consequences, while also having access to God because they see and know that He is there and that He is powerful.
I think this is the same reason, like I already said in opening today’s post, that we see the same kind of thing from people all the time today. People who aren’t Christian at all, or who couldn’t care less about having God involved in their lives, as soon as something goes sideways enough outside of their control, they start praying, begging God to intervene, apologizing for not caring about Him in the past, making promises to start following Him if He comes through, etc.
Whether we want to admit it or not, we are spiritual beings. God created us as His image bearers to be part of a human/divine family, living in close relationship with Him. We can rebel against that design, but our rebellion doesn’t make it any less real. I think this is why, for all our posturing and rebellion when things are going well and when we feel like we are in control, we tend to default back to looking for God’s help when we feel like we have lost that control.
I’m personally incredibly grateful that God revealed Himself to me, at a time when I was willing to listen, and pulled me out of that cycle of rebellious denial, when I knew, in my heart of hearts, that it really was denial.
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