Title: 13
Author: JBG
Last saved by: Paul D
Company: GDC

David’s Heir		13-08-07.ES13-58 /

David’s Heir: Divine Punitive Action: Categories of Volitional Responsibility: Wrong Thinking, Motivation, Decision, & Action; Results: Self-imposed, Self-induced, & Self-indulged Miseries; Discipline: Hosea 8:7a; 10:13a; Gal 6:7; Col. 3:25
28.	The trend to fight your own battles is stimulated by arrogance, self-centeredness, selfishness, self-righteousness, or a combination of these.
29.	Once committed to this approach, the believer makes himself a candidate for divine punitive action.
Divine Punitive Action:
1.	Since volition is the issue in the angelic conflict, every believer is required to use his free will in a responsible way.
2.	Good decisions broaden future options while bad decisions limit them.
3.	Saul was guilty of numerous bad decisions so that he ran out of options.  This portion of our study will first outline the principles of divine punitive action following by their applications to Saul.
4.	Volitional responsibility may be broken down into four categories: (1) thinking, (2) motivation, (3) decision, and (4) action.
5.	Negative or wrong thinking results in self-imposed misery and includes mental-attitude reactions associated with the arrogance and hatred of the two cosmic systems.

“Resistance or opposition to a force, influence or movement; a response to some treatment, situation, or stimulus; a mental or emotional disorder forming an individual’s response to his life situation” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.v. “reaction”).

6.	Spiritual maturity is characterized by the believer’s ability to respond to life’s circumstances with doctrine rather than with an emotional reaction. 
7.	Self-imposed misery is also associated with negative or wrong motivation.  If one’s thinking is flawed, then his motivation is also flawed.  This results in wrong decisions.
8.	When negative or wrong thinking and motivation results in negative or wrong decisions, then the result is self-induced misery.
9.	Thoughts and motives persuade or influence decision-making so that volition pulls the trigger on a negative or wrong decision.
10.	Deliberate negative decisions are always followed by deliberate negative reactions so that what a person does results in self-induced misery.
11.	When a believer’s modus operandi is governed by his emotions, then his reactions are often impulsive: “a sudden spontaneous inclination or incitement to some usually unpremeditated action; a propensity or natural tendency usually other than rational.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “impulse.”

12.	Impulsive negative or wrong decisions are emotionally driven acts of self-gratification resulting in self-indulged misery.
13.	Indulgence is taking unrestrained pleasure in an act and “implies excessive compliance and weakness in gratifying one’s own desires.”

Ibid., s.v. “indulge.”

14.	Since impulsive actions are spontaneous, they ignore the motivation and decision-making process and react strictly on emotion.
15.	Impulsive self-indulgence usually is a response to the lust patterns and resultant self-gratifying behavior associated with either facilitated lascivious or ascetic trends.
16.	Summarily, (1) self-imposed means “imposed by oneself; voluntarily assumed or endured,” (2) self-induced means “willfully acquired or brought on,” and (3) self-indulged means “excessive indulgence of one’s own appetites and desires.”

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, s.vv. “self-imposed,” “self-induced,” “self-indulgence.”

17.	Biblical passages that refer to these volitional categories include:
Hosea 8:7a -	For they sow the wind and they reap the whirlwind.
Hosea 10:13a -	You have plowed wickedness, you have reaped injustice, you have eaten the fruit of lies.  
Galatians 6:7 -	Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.
Colossians 3:25 -	He who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.
18.	PRINCIPLE: Good decisions result in blessings and expanded options from God; bad decisions result in suffering from self: self-imposed, self-induced, and self-indulged.
19.	These self-initiated stimuli are based in negative thinking or wrongdoing; they do not necessarily involved sin.  For example, many Christians make decisions based on false teaching or absence of teaching.
20.	Those who do not understand the absolute status of spirituality attained through rebound will never produce any divine good.  Instead their efforts are human good at best and evil at worst.
21.	Ignorance of the biblical view of sex, love, and marriage causes many believers to make wrong choices for a lifetime mate.
22.	The body of Christ is made up of any and every believer in the Church Age.  Collectivism is the proper approach to the process of spiritual growth, but individualism is the system through which application occurs.
23.	Far too many incidences of negative or wrong thinking do involve sin: decisions and actions based on emotion, lust, false teaching, and not knowing one’s limitations.
24.	Saul’s self-induced misery included each of these and we will note a few.

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