Zion, how can I comfort you? How great is your pain? Lovely city of Jerusalem, how can I heal your wounds, gaping as wide as the sea?
Your prophets deceived you with false visions and lying messages— they should have warned you to leave your sins and be saved from disaster.
Those who pass by shake their heads and sneer as they make fun and shout, “What a lovely city you were, the happiest on earth, but look at you now!”
Zion, your enemies curse you and snarl like wild animals, while shouting, “This is the day we've waited for! At last, we've got you!”
Lamentations 2:13-16
When a "man of God" does not warn you to "leave your sins and be saved from disaster" you can know for certain that you are hearing lies that do not come from God.
Here is the difficult part. These "lies" may be true, but what you need to hear is something else. A starving man is not blessed by hearing a lecture on what a proper diet should be.
Too often we are hearing from the pulpit accurate and even helpful words of Scripture, but the urgent need to repent and turn back to God is ignored! If you had a serious and bleeding wound and poison ivy, the doctor who treated the poison ivy first would certainly be engaging in malpractice.
Recognize the desperate condition of an unrepentant heart and sound the alarm for all those to hear who are clinging on to their sin instead of holding on to Jesus.
Pay attention to your own heart and put repentance at the top of your "To Do" list.
"Lord Jesus, show me today how I need to repent. Lord, the one thing that You never did, but I must do is to repent. You never sinned and so You never needed to repent. But Lord, my heart is continually tempted by the world around me to turn away from You for just one fleeting thought. Even of that Lord, I choose to repent and turn back to You. And may Your Name be praised forever! Amen."
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