Saturday, January 9: Joshua 6 Word keeping.

The miraculous nature of the defeat of Jericho is a prominent feature of the account. In verse 2, God says, "See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.” And God is true to His word. There is no way to spin the taking of Jericho to be a feat of human achievement. It is a ‘God-thing’ from beginning to end. We serve a mighty God who deserves honor and praise.

‘Serve’ is an important word in the sentence above. The taking of Jericho is a ‘God-thing’ and yet, at the same time, the Lord chose to partner with the army of Israel to win the battle and defeat Jericho. Often that is how God works in life. He partners with us to work His will. I would go so far as to say, most often God chooses to work through His people to bring about His will. Two thoughts spin from these threads.

First, we need to be listening to and following the Lord. On this day, the Lord’s plan was humanly reckless and crazy because exposing one’s forces for 6 days could be a disaster. But not so when that is what God directs. There will be other battles where God sends out His army in more conventional battle arrays, even employing deception and ambush. But that was not for today. God was doing much more that defeating one kingdom-city. God was terrorizing an entire land, so He chose an outlandish battle plan. Joshua needed to listen and follow.

Lord, as I go through today and this week, help me to listen and follow Your lead, whatever that might be…

Secondly, I noticed that Joshua was a man of his word. The spies cut a deal with Rahab to save their lives and Joshua was determined to fulfill Israel’s end of the deal. So he assigns the two spies to go into the rubble of a city and rescue Rahab and family. That may not be as easy as it sounds, depending upon where the spies were when the wall fell. Be that as it may, Joshua was determined to be a man of his word and he put a workable plan in place to fulfill his word. Joshua didn’t leave the fulfilling of his word to happenstance; he created a plan to fulfill it.

Here is where God turned the light on for me. I cannot, nor should not, treat my word frivolously. Being a man of my word takes planning, effort and often forethought. If I say I will be at a meeting, I better get it in my PDA. If I owe someone money, I need to write the check in a timely fashion. If I pledge to listen to and follow God “today and this week” as I did above, then I need to create some kind of reminder to ramp up my intentionality in doing so. (Writing these thoughts I never expected that God would use that brief prayer above as such an ‘in my face’ teaching moment, but alas He has. That is one of the things I appreciate about the Lord, He will hold me accountable. And yet He does so with tremendous love).

So Lord, I blustered earnestly but without much forethought that I would go through today and this week paying particular attention to Your voice and following Your lead. Now I hear You saying, “Okay, Bill, what’s your plan to ramp up your intentionality to do this” I am feeling convicted right now, Lord, so here is my plan. It is not fancy. It is a sticky note on my computer reading “Listen and Follow” and a series of emails set to automatically arrive daily to my inbox with the same words.

Lord, thank You for teaching me this lesson. Words are important! Continue teaching me that my word needs to be my bond… in BIG and small ways that my word needs to be my bond. I can only live this way with Your help, Lord, and intentionality on my part. Thanks for teaching me this lesson again this morning… AMEN.