Lava or Living?

There is a great difference between having rivers of living water well up and flow out of our inner most being, and having reactionary lava flows erupt out of our frustration and vexation against injustice.  

 I have sadly mistaken the later for the former and hope that my own confession will save many others from my same error.  

Unseen tectonic plates beneath the surface generate powerful friction that melts rock, builds up heat,  and results in powerful forces that shake the earth.  This underlying tension can suddenly find or create its own vent and cause an eruption that may continue for a long time.  

Intellectual eruptions can similarly have their origin in deep feelings, passions, and pent up frustrations that can inspire years of "reactionary expression"!  

Sadly, the inspiration beneath these intellectual lava flows is often more pent up animosity against perceived wrongs than grace filled love and hope offered in the Spirit of peace.  These fiery intellectual eruptions serve a purpose, but only after the magma cools and erodes into useful soil; this will often take many years.  

Rivers of living water, on the other hand, spring up from the midst of our spiritual paradise with God.  Their deep and rich source is that quiet, tranquil, sweet communion with our heavenly Father.  This is why these flows bring immediate life and grace everywhere they touch.  Living waters carry the nutrients of God's mercy, hope, and love,  that have been born out of the grace received from the life of God.  

Lava flows are powerful, but also dangerous and destructive; river flows are life giving gifts of peace and grace.  Both lava flows and artesian flows can spontaneously well up for long periods of time, but the results they produce are dynamically different.  Lava flows of intellectual reaction against perceived wrongs will melt many people into a movement that can  gouge huge new features in the social landscape.

Churches can be swept away, ministries consumed, reputations obliterated, and fellowships divided, and sadly those reacting against these perceived centers of injustice will rejoice at the perceived progress being made rather than mourn the destruction it leaves  behind.  No one denies that 
volcanoes can be brilliant, and so many intellectual lava flows also seem dynamically inspired.  Some can even erupt unabated for many years; however, we are not called to be lava flows.  

We are called to be filled with the Spirit of Christ,  so that the life of Christ will well up from within, carrying our rich fellowship with the Father and the Son to others in a life imparting flow of mercy and grace.  This too will change the social landscape; the main difference is that it will not take years for time and nature to erode our intellectually inspired lava flow into something truly beneficial.

Discerning The Opposition

In II Timothy 2:24 – 3:9, Paul instructed Timothy in how the Lord’s servant should respond to two different types of opposition. A servant of the Lord was not to quarrel with either type, but he was not to deal with all opposition the same way. 

In chapter 2:24-26 Paul wrote: “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in meekness correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they will come to the full knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.” To the first type of opposition, the Lord’s servant was to gently, meekly offer correction in hopes of seeing God grant repentance and deliverance.

Then in the verses that follow, Paul begins to address the other type of opposition with these words: “But know this, in the last days perilous times will come:” The type of opposition that would arise in the last days must not be dealt with in the same way as those addressed in the earlier verses. These ungodly opponents are described this way: “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.” Paul’s instruction for the Lord’s servant when faced with this type of opposition is markedly different: “from such people turn away!” Leave them alone!

 Paul knew that attempts to correct such people would be in vain. He goes on to characterize this type of opposition as being men like Jannes and Jambres who opposed Moses. Such men are opposed to the truth itself, whose minds have been corrupted, and have been disapproved concerning the faith. Paul reminded Timothy that such opponents folly would become evident to all. The Lord’s servant must let such warped men alone and leave them to their own self destruction. Men who are opposed to the truth itself will not be corrected with truth. Sound doctrine will not fix those who have no use for it because it does not suit their own carnal desires. They will deliberately turn their ears away from everything sound and gather to themselves teachers who will reinforce their own lusts with the license of false freedom.

Attempting to correct those who refuse the love of the truth is “casting pearls before swine”. God Himself sends such people a strong delusion rather than granting them repentance. It is better to discern the difference in the type of opposition we are facing than to make the mistake of correcting the wrong crowd and wind up trampled in the attempt. The Lord’s servants are to gently and meekly correct some who oppose them, but when the opposition is of the nature of those in the last days, “from such turn away” will keep the Lord’s servant out of harm’s way.