Dilution

The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.” [Judges 2.1-3]

What a sober passage of scripture!

God gives His people every opportunity to prove their devotion. In today's reading, this is made clear as God even stated that He allowed the inhabitants to only be slowly overcome by Israel so that they could prove themselves (Judges 2.22-23). But they didn't. Instead of persistently overcoming the inhabitants of the land, Israel grew content with the Canaanites' presence and so displeased God.

Herein lies a great lesson about contentment. Any time people find contentment outside of God's instructions (in this case to completely displace the inhabitants of Canaan), it doesn't stop there! Regardless what Israel's intentions were about their devotion to God, their failure to fully obey God in persisting to destroy all the Promised Land's occupants was their demise. Israel eventually began to worship as the Canaanites worshiped and thereby greatly displeased God.

Here is a thought - What has God told us to do? Specifically, as New Testament believers, Jesus instructed us to take the Message of the Kingdom of God to the world. Likewise, Jesus taught us how to pray (as if that would be an important part of our Kingdom propagation). 

Okay, here I go... if Jesus instructed us to pray for God's will on earth AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, it matters not what we see, feel, taste, or touch regarding our prayers. Our prayers are to be in alignment with God's will AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

God may give us opportunity to prove our allegiance to His instructions as our prayers may not seem to be being answered. Does that mean we are not praying correctly in praying for His will on earth as it is in heaven? NO! But, just as God proved Israel by allowing a 'paced' displacement of Canaan's occupants, so we have daily opportunities in the 'paced' answers to our prayers to persist to "pray on" for God's will on earth (as it is in heaven) regardless of whether we see immediate results or not!

Dilution is the much-to-be-avoided potential catastrophe of delayed results. It was that way for Israel then, and it is that way for us today! When we do not see prayers answered as we hope, the temptation is to adopt diluted views of God's will - to intermarry, if you will, with that which we are told to overcome - to believe that perhaps God's will is something that all the descriptions of heaven say it is not - to believe maybe God wants sickness, or poverty, or tragedy, or suffering...

"But what," one might ask, "is the harm in believing that - what if God does want these things?" My answer is clear, "Then why would God ever instruct us to pray for His will as it is in heaven (where none of these things exist)?" Is God schizophrenic? NO!

Our delayed answers to prayer are our opportunity to be persistent AND OBEDIENT! Period. We should not begin to make up uninformed theologies or doctrines about God because perhaps we are just impatient! Jesus told us (and very much taught us by example) to PRAY. He taught us to persist in prayer - He even gave us parables to make clear His intentions for  us pray fervently.

Any contentment we find in our unanswered prayers (wrong contentment) is the first step to dilution. Dilution is that which will ultimately lead to complete disconnection from God and His will AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. If unanswered prayer leads to contentment instead of persistence,  we become dangerously close to dilution and then ultimate disaster.

Father, I am challenged by my own words today. Help me to remain obedient to You and Your will as it is in heaven, and persist in prayer to that end - regardless of what delays I encounter.