Me, a scoffer?

The term scoffer doesn’t seem to come up much in my daily conversations with people or even in the literature that I read, but it sure does show up when I read the book of Proverbs. I’m not sure I would have recognized the scoffer within until recently. As the term has appeared quite a bit in my scripture reading over the last year I have become more sensitive to at least exploring with the Holy Spirit where scoffing might be showing up in my own life. A scoffer is one who mocks, ridicules or regards something as worthless or despicable. A few months ago as I was reading through a wonderful book called “The Happy Intercessor” I had a Holy Spirit moment where I became acutely aware of the scoffing in my own heart. The Lord has been growing my prayer life over the last number of years and I have been so thankful for his grace to grow in this gift, but I have been longing for a greater joy, freedom and lightness in intercession. The author shares stories of her journey with intercession including mistakes she’s made, lessons she has learned and miracles she’s witnessed etc. I can’t even recall the miracle she was sharing but as I read her testimony I began to scoff. Quietly my heart started to gently ridicule and look for flaws or weaknesses in the author’s perspective and testimony – picture eye-rolling and a slight head-shaking type disapproval. The Holy Spirit gently but firmly stopped me in the tracks of my thought life. He asked me, “Are you scoffing because you really disagree or are you scoffing because you don’t believe you could experience the same breakthrough?” 

What about the scoffing that takes place when we find ourselves participating in grapevine discussions? Recently I was in a group setting of moms and conversation went in the direction of talking about a certain family who is well-off and how they have arranged the dynamics of their home, things they are involved in and how often they travel. As we talked I definitely sensed a scoffing spirit was present. Why would we scoff at this family? Why do we so easily assume the worst and judge those who might experience different blessings than we have, assigning to them selfish and evil motives?

2 Peter 3:3-4a says “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming?”

Have you ever noticed that we don’t scoff at others’ misfortunes, only their breakthroughs, victories and blessings? I have noticed that in my own life scoffing arises in my heart because I might see someone else’s breakthrough, skill or gift and actually believe that I could never experience what they have experienced. The apostle Peter points out that scoffing is directly correlated to unbelief towards the promises of God in Christ. It seems that scoffing is the symptom of a deep sense of unworthiness. When we fear that we are unworthy unbelief arises in our hearts and we scoff to protect ourselves from potential disappointment or having to confront the unbelief (lack of faith) in our own hearts that causes us to miss out on the very promises we long to experience. Imagine someone sharing with you that they had someone pay off their house or were healed from a serious disease and you were in need financially for your own home or were battling an illness. If you believed that you were worthy of experiencing the same blessing you wouldn’t scoff at it. Hope would arise and faith would look for the thing you’re now hoping for. But if you don’t think you’re worthy, you won’t believe it’s possible to receive the same and therefore to protect yourself from your own hopelessness you will scoff at the testimony, mock it and become cynical toward someone else’s blessing.

My aim is not to criticize others as I am personally guilty of the same charge, but I do want to call to our attention the posture of our hearts and the beliefs that we hold concerning God’s promises, his wonder working power and his abundant grace which is available to each of us without partiality. Do we believe the truth that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10)? This means that the testimony of what God has done for someone else is the promise that he can and will do it for us too. I pray that we would become fully convinced of our worth in Christ Jesus and that when our ears hear of his abundant provision in another’s life our hope would spike and faith would arise to believe for what we haven’t yet seen!