A bit too comfortable

Friends,

Have you been living in partial victory?
Do you find yourself struggling against the same issues, day after day, month after month, year after year?

It's not the first time for you, for me, or for anyone else.

But the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who inhabited Jerusalem; so the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.
Judges 1:21 [NKJV]

The tribe of Benjamin did the same thing that all the others did. They took the land and declared victory. Indeed they were victorious. But they did not drive out the ones that they defeated. The victors therefore did not take full possession of their reward.

The Jebusites are a threshing people. They represent the weight of condemnation and self-recrimination. They beat us over and over with the guilt and reproach of our sinful past. In so doing, they drag us back to relive that past, to repeat those same stumbles, and to deny us the full experience of living under the blessing of God.

Why did the Benjamites allow the Jebusites to live with them? Who knows.

Why do we allow the sins and the weight of our carnal past to remain with us? Why don't we drive it out? Are we too comfortable with the familiarity of those life choices?

Choose today, brothers and sisters. Continue to live under condemnation and guilt and shame. Or drive out that Jebusite spirit, and live in the freedom that abundantly flows from genuine repentance.

Be encouraged, Jose