Message: The theme I picked up in the reading today is not anything new, but it contrasted the unfaithfulness of man with the faithfulness of God. In Judges 1 we read about all of the tribes that failed to do what they were commanded to do when they took the promised land. Instead of driving out the inhabitants of the lands they took, they kept the people as laborers. This is brutal to even think about but if we put this into parallel perspective with our own lives, there are promises that God has for us but we will struggle if we don’t drive out the things in our lives that would hinder our dominion in the promises he has for us. If we compromise something God has specifically instructed us to do we will be frustrated with our inability to thrive in our promise. We will see it but not succeed in it. We can’t have our promises fulfilled without being obedient. We can’t minimize the importance of things that we don’t want to deal with, and we can’t bargain with things that oppose God’s plan. It will not work in the long term even if we think we have temporarily done a clever thing to work around it. In Hebrews 8 we were reading about why the first covenant was unable to fulfill God’s plan. The simple answer is because it was a covenant between God and man. God fulfilled his end, but man did not. This is why Jesus came in to make the second covenant and this covenant is perfect because it was made entirely by God. God did all of the work by laying down his life to pay our way, and now we are required to follow after his example by laying down our lives to follow him. This raises the question of “how am I doing in this?”. Have I partially surrendered my life or have I fully surrendered? Is there anything in my life that I won’t allow God to touch? I can usually tell what those things are because I get nervous at the thought of change or loss in certain areas. Is there anything God has not been able to redirect in my life because of my resistance? The challenge today is to simply ask that question. My stomach gets in a knot just saying that because you can’t ask a question like that without expecting God to answer. Sometimes he answers by showing us something, and sometimes he answers by moving or redirecting something in our lives. How will we respond when that happens?
