War of the gods jennifer abbott12/12/2023 Which areas in your life have you been hesitant to move in obedience to God? What steps of obedience might you need to take even though you feel weary? Join the conversation in the comments.Īsk a close friend to pray for you as you choose to move forward - one faith-filled step at a time. Start your day with encouragement from Lysa TerKeurst and the First 5 writers with our free First 5 app. Join us for our next First 5 study of the book of John, That You May Believe, starting July 2! Click here to find out more. John’s Gospel is devoted to showing us how, through the life of Jesus, we can step into an entirely new beginning. Have you ever needed a fresh start? We need more than a renovation or a face-lift - we need a new creation. Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the L ORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” (NIV) RELATED RESOURCES Please help me as I walk by faith not sight. And thank You for always leading me toward victory. Thank You for the good plans I know You have for my life. Thank You for reminding me today that just because I can’t see You moving, it doesn’t mean You aren’t moving. Lord, I confess that at times my heart feels discouraged when I don’t see immediate results from my steps of obedience. These are certainties even when life feels so very uncertain. His plan is still good, and He can still be trusted. Let’s not stop short of our victory with God. But we do have to keep choosing to follow them. We don’t have to understand the “why” of God’s ways. Keep taking step after step after obedient step. But let me be the gentle whisper in your ear encouraging you to keep going. I don’t know what crazy steps of obedience God is currently calling you to take. I don’t know what seemingly impossible situation is staring you in the face today, sweet friend. It was solely dependent on their unwavering obedience offered to a loving and mighty God. Their victory never hinged on their ability or any of their well-thought-out plans. Flat! The city was theirs for the taking. When they marched around the city on that seventh day and gave their great shout with the blare of the trumpets, the walls fell down flat. (Joshua 6:2) And that is exactly what He did. God had promised Joshua that He would deliver Jericho, its king and army into his hands. (2 Corinthians 5:7) We take God at His Word and hold fiercely to His promises. We choose to walk by faith, not by sight. We make the same choice the Israelites made. So what do we do when He asks us to move in ways that don’t make sense to us? How do we keep “marching” when the situation still looks hopeless? It’s sometimes difficult to trust that He’s working behind the scenes. It's hard to continue marching when we don't see God move the way we thought He would. I don’t say any of this casually - as if it’s easy to keep going when there’s no evidence of our situation changing. They would have cheated themselves out of certain victory from God. What if they'd stopped after day two? Or day three? Or even day six? Even though nothing appeared to change … even though there wasn’t a single sign of cracking or crumbling in those massive walls … they kept marching. It’s how they kept taking steps of obedience. What moves me most about the Israelites’ part in this story isn’t so much their willingness to take that first crazy step of obedience. God declared this mighty sound would bring the walls down. Then, on the seventh day of marching, they were to end with trumpet blasts and a great shout. For six days straight, they were to march around the walls of Jericho. A plan that actually involved no “battle” whatsoever.Īll God wanted them to do was march. Obedience in the face of a battle plan that would make no sense to their rational minds. Instead, He asked for their complete and unwavering obedience. I’m sure there was no shortage of ideas or opinions on how they should tackle the problem before them.īut God didn’t ask anyone for their opinion. I can’t help but wonder what murmurs circled through the camp as they looked at the towering walls of Jericho. A problem that showed up in the form of a massive wall preventing them from moving forward into their promised land. In the sixth chapter of the book of Joshua, we find Joshua and the Israelites getting to experience this truth firsthand as they encounter a problem of epic proportions. I just need You to sign off on one of these, OK?īut the longer I walk with Him, the more I’m discovering that simply isn’t the way God works. So when I bring my struggles to the Lord in prayer, I tend to also bring my carefully thought-out ideas and suggestions He can choose from. They did this for six days.” Joshua 6:14 (NIV) “So on the second day they marched around the city once and returned to the camp.
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