Welcome Any Warnings from the Lord  

My wife was heading out to work one morning when she noticed a warning light on her vehicle. One of her tires was unusually low on air. She immediately returned home where I encouraged her to use my car while I checked out her tire. Later I saw what looked like a piece of metal in the tread. So I was able to take it to a shop where it could get repaired.

It would be easy to complain about experiencing a warning light coming up on your vehicle just as you are hurrying off to work. It can be inconvenient to have to turn around to go back home, to exchange vehicles for the day, or to have to take the time to sit at a repair shop for a while. However, we were very grateful for the technology providing notice to my wife that there was a problem which needed to be addressed. Otherwise she could have faced the much bigger problem of having to deal with a flat tire somewhere along her commute to work. That could have been more inconvenient, costly, and even hazardous. So while we don’t like to see such a light pop up on our vehicles, it serves an important purpose for which we should be thankful.

How do we tend to react whenever we sense some kind of warning sign from the Lord? Maybe it’s conviction over some action or attitude in our lives. Maybe it’s a call to change direction because we are heading the wrong way. Maybe it’s a warning about negative consequences or divine judgment on the road ahead if we continue traveling that way. Or possibly it’s just a small whisper of the Holy Spirit that something isn’t right in our walk with God and we need to submit to a spiritual check-up. God is faithful to warn us, but how do we receive such notifications?

It is often tempting to resent a warning from God. It brings a problem out into the open when we thought everything was going along well, or at least we didn’t want to admit there was anything wrong. We may not like having to deal with such an issue. We would rather keep it buried, or try to find a more convenient time out in the future to handle it. We can even interpret such warnings as indications of God’s anger or displeasure with us.

It reminds me of King Ahab of Israel. He liked to listen to the false prophets who told him what he wanted to hear. He hated one true prophet of God because as Ahab claimed, “He does not prophecy good concerning me, but evil” (I Kings 22:8). This evil king preferred to hear lies rather than the painful truth.

We have to guard against a similar spirit. We need to be careful about listening only to the types of messages we want to hear – the ones that are pleasing to us and fit our own ideas. We need to be willing to hear the hard messages from God, including the words of warning. While those truths may signal that there are problems, God isn’t pointing those out just to be harsh or critical of us. He is actually trying to help us. His warnings come not from the tongue of a hard-boiled judge, but from the heart of a loving Father. He is trying to correct us for our own good. He wants us to avoid those painful consequences waiting around the next bend of the road. He wants to get those issues fixed so that we can enjoy a full life in fellowship with Him.

Therefore let’s welcome God’s warnings when He sends them. They are expressions of His love and care.