The following is from the Trumpet Brief sent out yesterday. These daily e-mails contain personal messages from the Trumpet staff. Click here to join the more than 20,000 members of our mailing list, so you don’t miss another message.

What is the hardest thing for a human being to do? Thanks to pernicious human nature, of all the strenuous, formidable, even heartbreaking things you can face, perhaps the most difficult is this: when you’re wrong, to truly admit it. So you can change it.

I couldn’t help but think about this when I watched Peter Strzok’s recent congressional testimony. Strzok is a top fbi agent who was involved in investigating Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, Russia’s involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, the Trump-Russia dossier, the leak of Democratic National Committee e-mails, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and finally the probe into alleged collusion with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. He was also committing adultery with an fbi colleague. The thousands of text messages he exchanged with her communicated his bias against Trump and his supporters. He texted that “Hillary should win. 100,000,000 – 0,” that Trump’s supporters “smelled,” and that the fbi needed to use the investigation as an “insurance policy” against the off chance that Trump was elected. His colleague asked, “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok responded, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

But then Strzok’s actions were exposed. The world found out about his adultery, his political prejudice, and his obvious motivation to use his power to damage Mr. Trump. He was called before members of Congress on July 12 to give nationally televised testimony accounting for his actions.

And there this guilty man boldly, consistently and defiantly insisted he was perfectly innocent. The more evidence of his wrongdoing that was laid before him, the more combative and condescending he became. When one congressman questioned his integrity, Strzok called that “insulting” and said, “I take offense.” His defiance included a smirk so noticeable that a congressman called him out on it, saying he wondered how often Strzok had looked into his wife’s eyes and lied about his adultery.

Somehow this man had managed to rise to a very high position, paid with American tax dollars, within a high-level law enforcement agency. To me, this speaks volumes about the current state of America’s government.

As unique and egregious as Strzok’s situation is, his spirit of the self being right—even when shown to be wrong—has become common in America. In fact, it has prevailed throughout human history. It can easily plague your own life.

The question is, what happens to those who never admit fault, who never accept correction? “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Like a plane whose yoke is never turned or pulled, they fly off course—and crash.

The truth is, we are pitiful, blind creatures without God. We naturally take on the mindset of the devil, who won’t admit his failures and will still be insisting on his innocence and righteousness when he is finally cast into outer darkness.

This is the fundamental reason why human civilization has a history and an immediate future dominated by misery, injustice, strife and failure: Because man naturally rejects correction. America is a colossal example: This nation is being chastened, corrected and humbled in countless ways, yet this is not arousing in people any spirit of contrition or sense of repentance. People on every side of every issue are just digging in deeper, doubling down on the supposed correctness of their own position. With engines on full throttle and the mountainside coming into view, we still insist self is right.

We all need correction! There is nothing sweeter than a child who has done something wrong who responds to his parent’s correction and turns away from a wrong attitude and toward a humble repentance. God is a loving Father, and He will give us loving correction—not just through troubles and curses, but through the pages of His Word and through His servants—if only we will accept it.

Here are four points on how to take advantage of God’s precious correction.

1. Stop fighting it. Acknowledge that you have a deep-seated, carnal resistance to being corrected. You must get rid of that resentment (Proverbs 12:1).

2. Pray for it. Regularly pray that God will correct you, in His mercy. You need that persistent contact with God in order to live the way of God-is-right, not self-is-right (Jeremiah 10:23-24).

3. Accept it. Correction will come to you in different forms. Don’t focus on the means by which it comes; focus on whether it is true (Proverbs 27:5-6).

4. Apply it. Humbling yourself enough to do the first three points means nothing if you don’t follow through with the fourth (James 1:22).

“My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Hebrews 12:5). In a public address this past weekend, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry spoke about the need to embrace correction and thank God for it. He shared some personal experiences with correction he has received in his life, and said that every time he accepted and applied it, it brought growth and blessings.

Like flying a plane, living a good human life requires constant correction, adjustment, improvement. What happens to those who are correctable before God is not just a good life, but achieving their incredible human potential.

Before I go, let me just direct your attention to today’s Trumpet Hour episode. We have four segments I think you’ll find interesting:

• In Mexico, voters rejected the status quo in a landmark vote for a president who plans to take the country in a very different direction. Andrew Miiller talks about the implications of the coming presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador—both for Mexico and for the the United States.


• Liberals love the idea of the noble savage—the primitive person uncorrupted by civilization and inherently good. Our station manager, Dwight Falk, has done a fascinating segment about an anthropologist in the 1960s who lived for two years with a tribe in northern Uganda that demonstrated the opposite, and provided a stern warning about the direction society is going today.


• Brent Nagtegaal talks about the recent discovery by archaeologists in Israel of an enormous gate to a city mentioned repeatedly in Scripture that may support the biblical account of King David.


• And, as we have summer camp in full swing on our campus in Edmond, Oklahoma, I share how my experience in summer camp as a teen helped change the direction of my heart.