My sister, who is one of the stressed and depressed news junkies I mentioned in the last post, recently shared that the Lord has been convicting her about praying for judgment on political opponents. He told her, in the way God speaks to our minds, that it was not her place. I struggle with those same desires, so the message was for me too. And just in case I was not paying attention, God repeated it several more times in the notes from this week's Bible study on the parables of Matthew 13. The briefest and most convicting statement that zinged me was, "The primary calling of God's children is to plant seeds, not pull weeds." Oh how we long to be the ones to judge those soils, pull those weeds, sort those fish. But God has already assigned that job to the angels at the end of the age. He is neither upping His timetable nor taking volunteers. That stinks worse than the fish.
But it does make me feel better, or should I say right? about limiting my Christian radio listening to programs that sow the seed rather than buying their books and videos to make me a better informed weed wacker. I was once in a church that devoted an entire service to the evils of Pogs, collectible discs with characters on them, and no more evil than marbles. If I see a friend wandering into a weed patch, I will let them know, but most of the time, it is a big enough job checking the soil and weeding out the sins of my own heart. Maybe the reason God uses angels to sort the righteous from the wicked is that they do not have the sin nature that corrupts our judgment. But the fact that I don't get to help leaves me out--of sorts.
(P.S. I did hold onto one prayer that is judgmental but supported by the Bible--May the schemes of the wicked come back on their own heads.)
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