10They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.
We sometimes make a critical mistake by not completely cleaning up our lives when we become Christians. We think a partially cleaned life is better than nothing. We don’t want to get too radical in our discipleship. The Israelites allowed some of the original inhabitants to remain in the land when the Lord told them to clear the land of all its inhabitants. Not obeying allowed future struggles and strife. If you were to trace each instance of their failure to clear the land down through their history you would see that each failure to completely clean the land resulted in future conflict and strife. I often hear of couples who get married but don’t clean out the old relationships. They have a box hidden with some memorabilia of that relationship. It might not even be a physical box. Old emails and old dating site profiles not discontinued and closed. These always seem to crop up and create present and future conflict. We need to clean house when we come to Christ. The old needs to go and the new needs to be embraced. What are you holding on to that you need to release?
The Arnold Journey 