Which Ruts Will You Choose?

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message]

This winter, my street has not gotten plowed nearly as often as I would have liked. As the snow got packed down by cars driving over it, ruts began to form--often just one down the middle of the street, making two-way traffic difficult. While veering from the well-worn ruts could be hazardous as the unpacked snow threatened to ensnare vehicles in its snowy grip, at least the ruts carved a path to drive on.

In Judges 10 and 11, the Israelites had gotten pulled into the practices of the culture around them by serving other gods. Yet when they cried out to God, he sent Jephthah, a mighty warrior chosen by God to deliver the Israelites from the oppression of the nations around them. Before going into battle, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”

This wasn’t something God commanded. Just a verse before, we read that “the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah.” He already had everything he needed to defeat the Ammonites. So why this last-minute vow? Because this is what Jephthah learned from the culture around him. The people groups around the Israelites offered sacrifices to their false gods, and Jephthah had seen that. When things got tough, Jephthah returned to the ruts of the culture around him. Instead of believing in a God who offers free grace, he believed in a God who demanded something in return.

I wonder what the ruts are that we fall into when we don’t know what to do. Our culture doesn’t have practices as drastic as human sacrifice, but it tells us other things--that our value comes from what we do, that we always have to have the latest and greatest stuff, that we have to have a certain GPA or title on our business card to amount to anything. These ways of thinking can become ruts that affect our actions--perhaps especially the split-section reactions that seem to happen before we even fully think them through.

Jephthah likely didn’t think he was giving in to cultural pressure when he made that vow to God. He probably didn’t think about the ruts of thinking and acting that had slowly crept in.

So what are the cultural patterns we’re entrenching ourselves in? What are the ruts we’re creating, possibly without even knowing it? We can easily turn to what the world tells us is important, or we can turn to God and what he says is important. It’s the ruts we create in the everyday moments that turn into the ones we go back to when the going gets rough.

Which ruts will you choose?

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]