April 21: Of Clean Slates, Bad Habits, and Turning Neither Right nor Left

Joshua 22:21-23:16

Luke 20:27-47

Psalm 89:14-37

Proverbs 13:17-19

"Old habits die hard."  On reflection, though, one might add "bad habits die harder."  Most people who struggle with addiction know this to be true.  The best way to make sure old bad habits stay dead is to reject them completely, continuously, and with unrelenting ruthlessness.  A smoker cannot take just that one puff.  An alcoholic ideally shouldn't even put themselves in situations where others are drinking. 

The sad truth is, we aren't capable of the consistency that completely breaking a bad habit requires.  Which is why, after years of success, we regress.  We take that drink.  We smoke that cigarette.  We lose our temper.  And when that happens, when we struggle with a bad habit we thought we'd already overcome, and are confronted yet again with the rubble its destruction leaves in our lives, often we wish we'd never started in the first place.  We wish for that clean slate, before we'd lit up that first cigarette, before we'd taken that first drink. 

God got that.  Which is why He gave the Israelites the clean slate of territory in the promised land - "The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations".  He then instructed them to be ruthlessly uncompromising in their obedience to Him - "Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left."  

And then He warned them against inviting the bad habit of disobedience into their lives, by insulating themselves from those who didn't know Him - "Do not associate with these national that remain among you; do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them…if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations…they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in. Your eyes, until you perish from this good land…"

The setting of the book of Joshua is around 1300 years before our Lord.  That would put it around 3400 years ago.  And yet, when we look around today, God's words remain true: the world is unrelenting in its demand for compromise, for capitulation.  To avoid the bad habit, we need to be strong, obeying His Word, avoiding even the slightest distraction to the right or the left.

Father, we already have a long list of bad habits that distract us from You.  The world continues to pile it on, drawing our attention away, tempting us to disobedience.   Fight the battle for us again, as You did for the Israelites.  Purge us of these bad habits, and give us the discipline "to walk in the light of your presence, Lord", turning neither to the left nor to the right.