Swamp Alligators
Linda is away during March, Clayton Bjelan brings you today’s devotion.
He just leaves the paperwork (and the customer waiting) to go and do whatever has grabbed his attention!
Reference: v18-19 He said, “Roll large rocks up to the mouth of the cave, and post some guards there. But don’t stop; pursue your enemies! Attack them from the rear and don’t let them reach their cities, for the Lord your God has given them into your hand.” (TNIV Bible)
Explore: I heard a great saying recently… “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget you came to drain the swamp”. What a great description of life sometimes. How easy is it to get distracted by things which seem to be important, but aren’t really?
A relative of mine has a work collegue who gets distracted by almost anything (and they are the manager of a shop!). If he is doing some paperwork to take out to a customer (who is waiting in the shop) and a staff member comes up to ask him a question, or his phone rings, he just leaves the paperwork (and the customer waiting) to go and do whatever has grabbed his attention!
Application: God had called Joshua and the Israelites to completely destroy the land of all the people, but in these verses we see that they had captured 5 kings! By anyone’s standard, capturing 5 kings is an incredible effort.
How easy must it have been to just settle for capturing the kings and decide not to pursue the rest of the people. I mean, after all, if you capture the king – the rest crumbles right??
But God had not said to Joshua ‘capture the kings’, He’d said destroy everyone in the land.
And Joshua realised that it would be easy to settle for the capture of the kings – so he ordered his men to lock them in the cave and get on with the task that they were called to – go pursue the rest of the people!
How often we can get distracted by things (some that we might think are good), but these can be what takes our focus off what God wants us to do!
Prayer: Dear God, help me to stay focussed on what You have for me. Help me to not be distracted by things that could send me off course.
What’s distracting you from what God wants you to do? What are you going to do about it?
This article was written by Clayton Bjelan