The next effort is the physical effort to go when we are stirred to action, when we are inspired to reject the world and follow Christ. Now it is important to realize that God does not simply deliver on demand. In Numbers 14:39-45, when Israel, after recanting their initial response to the spy report, went up against the Amalekites and Canaanites, and they were soundly defeated. And God does not deliver a disobedient, faithless people. He instead delivers them into the hands of their enemy.
This is the first of Israel's great lessons in no-deliverance. Those who presume on God will have their expectations reversed, as Amos later put it. Those disobedient people who long for the Day of the Lord, that is, the day of God's wrath, will receive darkness.
