Life is Not For Softies

…and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. _Deuteronomy 7:2

David Lee, this is a challenging passage – especially verse 2 (“complete destruction”) and certainly not for the fainthearted. 

I have a theory about this concerning the Nephilim (Genesis 6) that maybe we can talk about some day.  But for now here’s a few things to keep in mind:

There really are life and death situations.  Win/Win is not always an option.  The higher the stakes the more drastic the measures that must be taken to ensure the outcome. 

When it comes to family and your entire way of life the most drastic of actions will sometimes be required of you. 

David Lee, potentially in just a few years you will have pushed off from your father’s home and started out on the sea of life to begin the process of starting your own family.  Don’t stroke your ego and satiate your ambitions with little wins while you lose your family.  Fight for them, work for them, love for them.  Don’t win the whole world and lose your soul and the souls of those you love the most. 

There’s another lesson here. 

Whatever our take on God’s command to devote seven nations to complete destruction, there is no dodging that there really are some things that must be completely and totally eradicated from our lives if we hope to be all that we should be for our family and for our God. 

Every man has an inner lifelong battle that he must fight and he must be merciless and implacable in battling and destroying those inner demons – no holds barred. 

David Lee, life’s hard.  Softies won’t make it.  Man up.  Fight for what matters and more importantly, live for what matters.

I got your back, love, Papa

Prayer: Father God, put the fight in David Lee. He can be taught how to fight, but the fight has to be in him – the passion to excel and strive to win. But also please give him wisdom to know which fights really matter. Don’t let him waste his life on little wins. Help him to live his life for what counts the most. And above all, be with him. There are some battles that we just can’t win by ourselves.