After Pentecost Devotional - Day 69

“Then the Israelites got rid of the idols of the foreign gods, and they began worshiping only the LORD. Finally, there came a time when the LORD could no longer stand to see them suffer.” Judges 10:16

So often we relate to prayer and God along the lines of the jinn of Arab mythology as we know them from the stories of Arabian Nights. We consider that prayer functions as the rubbing of a lamp which somehow grants us control of an all-powerful being. We wield that lamp in order to gain power, control, and enforce our will upon those around us. We seek to manipulate our circumstances in a manner as to advance our personal needs, desires, and whims above those of others.

In our competition over resources, security, and personal advancement, we dis-consider that a proper relationship with God is rather different from such an approach. Here in the midst of Judges, we find a passage that shouts aloud a reminder that Yahweh is no jinn to be controlled and abused for our pleasure and satisfaction. Instead of God being a quick fix when we get ourselves in trouble, this passage would tell us that we are responsible for following God's directions.

The pattern of the nation had been to follow Yahweh for a limited time. They would cry out for help and relief, but not accept their responsibility for the problems that came their way. It was only in the moment of crisis that they wanted to turn to Yahweh for deliverance. That is not the manner in which Yahweh wanted to be served. It was a method of using Yahweh, not one of honest worship.

The structure of Yahweh's design for Israel would have kept their enemies at bay. It would have built an arrangement in which peace could flourish, in which prosperity would flow in generosity to meet the needs of one and all. It would have offered a new way forward in which the nations around Israel would look to Israel for guidance. Instead, the people did not really want to place their trust in Yahweh's terms. They did not want to live by a new set of values, priorities, and structured responsibility for others.

More often than not, we live under the same issues and struggles. We lay claim to wanting to serve God, but deep down we are more concerned with other issues of our own comfort, our personal advancement according to social norms, our own desires to live above the fray of stresses that would bear down upon us. We believe we know what is best for ourselves and strive to fulfill those dreams and desires. All the while, God calls us to a different focus on building a community of faith, peace, and caring for one another.

We relate to God more from the standpoint of seeking to manipulate God to fulfill our dreams and ambitions, rather than from the perspective of asking God to enable us to become the community of faith God would call us to be.

Instead of serving God's purposes, we seek to bend God to our wills. We don't like the idea of not being the ones in control, of not calling the shots. Rather than serving an almighty and God worthy of our full submission, we want God to be one degree less than all-powerful, a slave in submission to our whims and ambitions.

In what ways are you still struggling to control God?

"Lord, help me to become your servant, placing my life in submission to your direction."
—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin

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