Among Stupid Souls

The following is entry #5 from Shepherds Balm, a new devotional for pastors by Rich Earl. Purchase copies or find out more at shepherdsbalm.com

What are we to do when we come across
stupid souls? Ignorant souls we can deal
with, they need knowledge; the stupid soul does not
need knowledge; the stupid soul needs to have the
word of God until he is worried by it. The difficulty
is how the worker is to get the word of God into its
right place. Jesus Christ says the stupid soul is the
one that “hears the word but does not understand it.”
“When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and
does not understand it, then the wicked one comes
and snatches away what was sown in his heart…”
(Matthew 13:19).

Does God hold a man culpable for being stupid
spiritually? He certainly does. Every case of stupidity
recorded in the Bible is punished by God. How can I
get the word of God into a stupid soul?
Read 1 Samuel 15, and see how Samuel dealt
with Saul. It’s the commandment of God, “why did
you not obey that?” Take the apostle Paul, the very
same thing: “Oh foolish Galatians who hath
bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?”
And our Lord’s own words: “Oh foolish man, and
slow of heart to believe after all that the prophets
have spoken!”

This is the time, Christian worker when you must
use the word until you get it wedged in somehow in
that stupid soul, until it rankles and worries its way
to the soul’s salvation or destruction, and there was
never a class that will drive a worker closer to God
than the stupid soul, they will tax every bit of
patience and endurance you have. They always
pretend to want to do something – “ever learning,
and never able to come to the knowledge of the
truth” – why? They would not obey the word they
heard, that is the beginning.

You remember Samuel asked Saul if he had
fulfilled the word of God with regard to the
Amalekites, and Saul said he had: “Blessed be thou
the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the
Lord.” And Samuel said, “What meaneth then this
bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of
the oxen which I hear?” It’s pretending that is the
first characteristic of the stupid soul.

When God gives you a word for a soul who is
stupid, keep at it. This is the time when you have to
keep using the verse God gives you for a soul: every
time you meet him, every time you write to him,
every time you talk to him. The only way you will
stir up that one out of his stupidity is by driving
home the word of God, and presently you will see
that stupid soul saved from perdition, if it has not
gone as far away from God as Saul, and as far away as
many a stupid soul will go for lack of faithful
workers.

When the Word of God has begun its piercing
even to the dividing of soul and spirit, it will have its
wonder-working way and heal and re-create and
dissipate the stupidity.
— Oswald Chambers, Workmen of God, pp. 71-79

Then Jesus answered and said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.” — Matthew 17:17 (NKJV)