Joshua – (A Personal Encounter) 3
A Personal Encounter from the book of Joshua
We had just celebrated the Passover lamb, an absolutely amazing time when our community came together. Together times around a meal are a wonderful experience, a time where you really begin to get to know your family and friends. After we had cleared away all the remains (it seemed strange to me that we had to destroy what was left) we found to our utter amazement another strange thing. The manna we had relied on for 40 years stopped appearing each morning (Joshua 5:12) . This manna was our free hand out from a bountiful God who had arranged this “daily bread”. All we had to do was go and gather what we needed, no questions asked. Our only stipulation was that we should only gather enough manna for what we needed that day, it had no value except for our daily sustenance. You see it went off after a day. I know I tried it once, contravened Gods word to my cost, the tent absolutely stank the next morning. I realised God was a God to be obeyed not disobeyed and that I needed to trust Him daily for all my basic needs. God, I realised was no man’s debtor when that man or woman walked with, and worked with Him. God had brought us into a new land where we no longer needed His daily hand outs because He had given us the freedom, the ability and the fertile ground to provide for ourselves. All we had to do was be willing to use the good things He had given.
After our healing was complete, Joshua again rallied us to begin our assault on Jericho, it wasn’t so much that they were our enemies but more about us as a people group claiming what our God, Jehovah had promised “to you and your descendants”. What our time in the wilderness had taught us, well taught me anyway, was that God was faithful and that He was committed to bringing about all that He communicated.
At the time it did seem to be a rather odd approach that Joshua was taking, marching around the walls of Jericho without making a sound (Joshua 6:1-10) . I suppose though that the inhabitants must have been a bit unnerved seeing all these men marching around their city walls wondering what they were going to do next.
When we finally finished our 6 days marching, Joshua told us that we would be marching around seven times on the seventh day, well our hearts sank; there seemed to be no sense to any of this. Why didn’t we just attack? The inhabitants were scared stiff any way. But no, Joshua was insistent that this is what Jehovah had said. This really made an impression on me, the fact that our leader was prepared to wait because he believed and sensed what God was saying.
It was amazing to see how Jehovah had enabled us to win this victory. It wasn’t about the bloodshed; it was about survival. This newfound freedom that we were moving into was also teaching us about God and His promises. It was having an impact on our spirituality, all those around us were worshipping gods made by men, carved out of wood or stone or some other material. It seemed to me that people were trying to give their gods some kind of form so that they could at least try to understand what they were worshipping. What I was beginning to understand was that our God, Jehovah was better understood without form. I suppose we had to have faith in God something that I would find out was going to take the rest of my life to grasp. I would find out how to deal with failure as well as success. It was about accepting God for who He said He was.
The next lesson was dealing with failure.
// Required code