Courage and Obedience

Joshua 1:1-4 – 1 Now it came about after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, that the LORD spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ servant, saying, 2 "Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. 3 "Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you, just as I spoke to Moses. 4 "From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory.

So what do we see here: We see that Moses has died and God reminds Joshua of this fact. I am sure that Joshua is well aware of this fact because of the death of Moses, Joshua is now in charge. Have you ever been in a position at work or somewhere else where the main person is sick or held up for some reason and now all the sudden you are in charge? You might have been training for that day to come but when it comes – it can take your breath away and sometimes your courage along with it. All the sudden you are standing there with all the responsibility squarely on you. That is the position that Joshua is in – now all the responsibility of leading the people of Israel is squarely on his shoulders.

So God reminds Joshua that Moses dead but also reminds him that He has given them land. There is land right there that is for the taking and all the need to do is go and get it. Joshua is commanded to lead the people into Canaan to claim the land that they had been promised by the Lord. The land was given to them back in Gen. 12:7 and the promise was reaffirmed to every succeeding generation of the nation of Israel. The land was their land! There was no need for them to continue their wandering around in the wilderness. They had a land, all they had to do was to go and take it!

I look around me as I go through my weeks and I see Christians who are defeated, who struggle with sins, who, for all intents and purposes are wandering around in a spiritual wilderness living in fear. It does not have to be that way! God has promised you and I can live in victory but the caveat is that you must live in obedience to Him. Just read verses like 2 Corinthians 2:14 which says: But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. Or read verses like Rom. 8:37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. I believe with all my heart that God did not save you to see you defeated! Most of the time, we are defeated because we refuse to walk in obedience! I am talking about living a life of obedience to Christ which in turn leads us to triumph in Christ and conquering through Him. Let us live the obedient life! Living in obedience is the start to being a courageous Christian.

Have you ever found yourself with responsibility square on your shoulders when you did not expect it?  Have you lived in defeat rather than in obedience?

Inner Man

A verse that I love is this:  Ephesians 3:16 -   that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man,

We see that it is Paul praying that their inner being would be strengthened. The question might be strengthened how? The answer to that would be by the power of the Spirit with the riches of God! Paul does not want them to be anemic Christians. He does not want them to be impotent Christians. He wants them to be strong and powerful and that comes by them being strengthened on the inside. He wants them to be controlled on the inside by the Spirit of God. He wants them to be yielding to Spirit in their lives and to have the power of God in them.

Here is the thing with many of us, on the outside have such a calm and cool look but on the inside we are torn apart. On the inside we are torn apart by worrying, anger, low self-worth, or whole host of other things. On the inside we insecure about everything and on the outside we make it look like we are just calm, cool, and collect. We might wonder why it is this way and I think one possible part of this answer is because we are not strengthened on the inside.  Rather than being strengthened on the inside we are weak and anemic believers. We attempt to strengthen ourselves by being more disciplined or by having more self-control or by forcing ourselves to what we think is right. It comes down to us trying to do things on own power and just add a little God into the equation.

We in our human state have a tendency to think that it about us but it is about the work of Spirit on the inside of us. Here is an important part of this; if you are saved you have the Spirit inside you and it is about yielding yourself to Him. That means allowing you to be controlled in attitude and action by Him. Allow yourself to be strengthened by Him. In other words, in all this, the goal is to exercise your “inner man”.

One question you might ask in how do I strengthen the inner man.  In thinking about this I came up with the following and it is nothing you have not heard before:

1) Being in Word daily – Learn and study on your own. I encourage you to not only read the Word of God but to study it. This is not reading and studying out of duty but reading and studying out of love for God.

2) Prayer is another step here and it is a daily thing. The Bible says we are to pray without ceasing. Prayer is not just something you do when things are bad in your life but you need to have times of just thanking God and times of just praising him. It is not just about always asking him but it is so much more. When we miss out on all the aspects of prayer we miss out on really strengthening our inner man.

3) Living in obedience which is doing the right things all the time is another way of strengthening the inner man. It means being a person of integrity. It means you are living in the grace, mercy and love of God and you are extending the grace, mercy, and love of God to others. When you are strengthened on the inside you will then be doing the right thing on the outside.

These are just a few practical things we need to be doing to exercising the inner man and there are many more things we can be doing. I challenge you to not be satisfied living the anemic and impotent Christian life but to live the abundant life that Jesus promises us.

How  is it that you strengthen the inner man?

Obedience?

Yesterday we started talking about 2nd Samuel 6:1-9 which is a shocking passage of Scripture.  We specifically looked yesterday at the first two verse and saw that David assumed that he should bring the Ark of God back but never sought God on it.  We talked about how we always need to seek out what God wants.

Today we move on to verses 3-5 and see what other problems are here in this shocking passage.  Let us read these verses:  3 They placed the Ark of God on a new cart and brought it from the hillside home of Abinadab. Uzzah and Ahio, Abinadab’s sons, were guiding the cart 4 with the Ark of God on it, with Ahio walking in front. 5 David and all the people of Israel were celebrating before the LORD with all their might, singing songs and playing all kinds of musical instruments—lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets, and cymbals.

We read this and say, where is the problem here, other than maybe it sounds like a Holy Rock Concert? We have the Israelites who have built a new cart to carry the Ark, that cannot be wrong. If it was an old cart that could be a problem but this is a new one specifically made to carry the Ark. We have the people worshiping and celebrating before the Lord? Where is the problem in that?

We need to figure out what the problem is here.  The problem has to do with the idea of the cart  because it is the thing that is going against God’s way. Look at what David does, he has a brand new cart made to carry the Ark. This Holy Ark we would say deserves a new cart, but some very important detail has been over looked by David and the others. God in Numbers 4 and Exodus 25 give some specifics as too how the Ark is to be moved and a cart is not it. Where does the idea of a cart come from?  They are patterning the moving of the Ark after how the Philistines did it and not how God told them to move it. God does not care that they built a new cart because a new cart is not how he told them to move it. Look at Exodus 25:12-15 and how God said to move the Ark – 12 Cast four rings of gold for it, and attach them to its four feet, two rings on each side. 13 Make poles from acacia wood, and overlay them with gold. 14 Fit the poles into the rings at the sides of the Ark to carry it. 15 These carrying poles must never be taken from the rings; they are to be left there permanently.

The detail that David and the others forgot was that they were not to be moving the Ark by cart but that it was to be carried by the priest on poles. Now this just might seem like a small detail, but it shows a lack of not paying attention to God and not paying attention to His word. It shows a lack of obedience. Just think, they were patterning what they were doing after the ungodly rather than God.

How often is this us? How often do we get in trouble because we do not do things the way God says we should them? How often to do we get in trouble because we lack obedience to what God tells us to do? How often do we pattern our lives and what we do off how the world says to do it and try to fit God into it? We are not called to fit God into anything – He is God creator of all – we need to fit ourselves into Him.

Something else here is there is no such thing as selective obedience. Sometimes we harp on God ways to do things and the when God’s way does not fit our preference we do things after a worldly pattern. He is God and we are to be in full obedience to him and not selective obedience.

Have you ever found yourself in a position where you were lacking obedience to God and His ways or you had selective obedience?  Care to share?

Abraham–5 Lessons–Part 2

We are looking at 5 lessons from Abraham found in Genesis 22 this week.  Here is the second installment.

God gave instructions and Abraham followed with what information he had been given.

Look at this as seen in  in verses 2-3 of Genesis 22: He said, “Take now your  son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah,  and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

This is some hard information to process when you think about. I am sure that every parent would rather give themselves up as a sacrifice rather than give their child as a sacrifice.  Abraham asked to willingly sacrifice his son and  I can not imagine!

Think about the hard task Abraham is given here. He is to go and sacrifice his son that he loves. Imagine the mixture of emotions that Abraham had to be going through. What you would read, if you were reading through Genesis, is that Abraham has a relationship with God and God has dealt with him in the past but this was different.  This was much different because this time God was asking a lot – a whole lot.

Now,  I would think that because Abraham knew God pretty well by this time in his life and that there would be a sense that God would take care of him and Isaac. Abraham has seen God come through in some pretty amazing ways by this time in his life.  Even still I am sure that this was pushing Abraham way beyond anything he could have ever thought of.  I am sure there was nervousness and major fear in him about whether or not he would have to really sacrifice his son. I am sure there were doubts about if this was the right thing to do in this situation. I am sure he was wondering if he really heard God right.   I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I would have MAJOR doubts on every level!

What we do not see here in the text is Abraham arguing with God about this. We do not know if he did argue with God about this but I would have to think there was some serious discussion about it. Most of us argue with God over much smaller things in life but this was huge. Think about it – Abraham had no idea at all if God would provide a substitute or not. But what does he do?  He just followed God even when he did not have all the information believing that more information would be given later.  He was obedient and trust with what he knew about God.

When we read the Word of God we have all the instructions we need in this life. We need to make sure we are spending time in God’s word and listening to His instructions through prayer and meditation. We have an advantage over Abraham in this way because Abraham would not of had anything other than past experience to go on. For all of us, God still might ask us to do something without all the information, but we by being in the Word of God, by prayer and meditation, and by past experience,  should know that God will be faithful.  How do you do when you do not have all the info?  Do you act in obedience or do you try to find a way to stall until you get all the information you think you need?

If you are a leader, sometimes you will not have all the information but you will need move ahead and  trust God with what information you have at the time.  God will provide the way – if you stay out of the way.

Do you stay close to God and trust and obey or do you run the other way?  What are your thoughts?