How do you react when someone says something uncomfortable about you?
How do you react when your wife criticises your behaviour? How do you react
when people make unfavourable comments about your children? What direction does
your mood travel in when your laziness or lateness or forgetfulness is pointed
out to you? How do you react when a colleague highlights your double standards?
What is your response to your sin being pointed out to you?
I heard a good illustration on this recently. Imagine that it was
possible to completely get rid of your nerve endings. Imagine that it were
possible without too much fuss to rid yourself of any physical sensation and
therefore not be able to experience pain. At one level that sounds good (a pain
free life) but, without nerve endings you will, indeed, avoid pain but you will
experience damage. No nerve endings = no pain yes but, you will suffer very
serious damage – you will start running into things, you will break your nose,
impair your fingers, badly bruise your toes and so on. Here is the point if
when you hear something uncomfortable you always respond negatively – storming
off to your den, having a temper tantrum, snapping at your kids, moaning at
your husband – then you’re slowly deadening your nerve endings. The end result
of such behaviour is a completely hardened heart and much damage all around you
So think again – how did you react the last time that you were
confronted about your sin? What was your response when your husband/wife,
child, work colleague, neighbour, church member challenged you? Did you take
the Biblical escape-route or did you cut off
another nerve ending?
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