Ministering: Pastor Sola Ogidan
Text: 2kings 13:10-19
Date : 20th July, 2020
This is a classic story about a king and a prophet who was about to die. The king had gone to meet him on his sick bed just before his death. And as his last gift to the young King, the old prophet had asked the King to perform some prophetic acts which will symbolize God’s deliverance of his nation from the stranglehold of the Syrian King.
He was instructed by Elisha to shoot his arrow out of the window and then to strike the ground which he did only thrice. This annoyed the prophet who informed him angrily, that he would only defeat the Syrians thrice and no more because he stopped hitting the ground after just three times.
From the story, we could surmise that the problem of Joash, the king of Israel was that he was insensitive to the words of Prophet Elisha. He could have kept striking the ground till the prophet says it was enough but he could not discern the connection between his actions and the divine intervention in the affairs of the nation. That is what I call “spiritual dullness”. In our lives, we are also unable to discern seasons and hence we are unable to take maximum advantage of them.
There are specific times when God decides to visibly work wonders in our lives but if we cannot discern such seasons we will miss His visitation. In Luke 19:41-44, we note that Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people of Jerusalem were not sensitive to the time of their visitation, and missed a divine intervention which would have preserved the city from been destroyed many years after that visit of Jesus. Spiritual dullness is still a great undoing for many believers.
Luke 24:24-26
Spiritual dullness is your inability to interpret and decode spiritual or divine transactions. It is also spiritual dullness when you find it difficult to believe what God is saying. God speaks through creation and events but many people cannot discern it. You are spiritually intelligent when you are able to gain clear insight and interpret accurately spiritual happenings.
Causes of spiritual dullness
There are many causes of spiritual dullness but we will look at two briefly:
- Laziness, indifference and apathy about spiritual things (Hebrews 5:11; Revelation 3:14-19).
Until our hearts begin to open up to spiritual things, it would never look like God is speaking. If we are lazy, sluggish, indifferent and having apathy for spiritual things we can never discern the move of God. We are either cold or hot, being lukewarm is not permitted by God. God is always willing to move amidst us but we are not always available. He has not withdrawn His power in our generation as many have erroneously thought. The problem is our unavailability. When we give ourselves to the Lord, we will see His hand upon our lives but when we are too occupied with earthly things we become spiritually dull.
- Being carnally minded (Roman’s 8:6)
We need to set our minds on the things of the Spirit and press to understand them. When we begin to fellowship with the Spirit, our minds will experience spiritual upgrade. Open your mind and let the word infiltrate it. Find the things of the Spirit and begin to mind them (Matthew 24:35-39).