Don’t make obedience optional
Last month Christine and I spent a week’s holiday in Llandudno, North Wales.
During our stay, on one particular day, a number of primary school children from around twelve local primary schools descended on the town to undertake educational field visits. The number of children ran into hundreds, and together with tourists, the town was extremely busy. On every street there were children being marshalled by teaching staff and volunteers. However, the main event was watching the children cross the road. They followed meticulous instructions and a definite drill was adhered to. They had four teachers stand in the middle of the road and the children crossed over in twos with accompanying staff.
Now this took me to a hugely significant event in the history of God’s people in the book of Joshua, where around 2 million people were asked to cross, not a busy road, but a raging, swollen River Jordan to enter the Promised Land.
The Jordan river served as a boundary marker. The people needed to cross that river to embrace their destiny. In fact, remember the first thing God said to Joshua in Chapter 1: ‘Moses my servant is dead. Now you get ready to lead these people to cross over into the land that I will give them’.
The funny thing about obedience – you actually have to do it!
You can dream dreams. You can write elaborate vision statements and goals on paper.
You can say you ‘heard from God’… but if you don’t do it, it remains disobedience in any language.
Four hundred years of slavery and forty years of wilderness wandering, the Children of Israel are on the edge of the Promised Land. They have experienced emotional highs and lows, fear, discontent, discouragement, testing etc. and now they stand on the brink of what had been promised to Abraham in Genesis 12.
They may well have thought, ‘How is this going to happen?’ Really?
After 40 years of supernatural grace and power, miraculous manna falling every day, the providence of God evidenced throughout their journey, yet were they truly convinced God could make a way for them through this raging river? Beware of familiarity! The command at the Red Sea was ‘stand still’, here it was ‘get moving’.
Spare a thought for the poor old priests, when they received the instructions for what was expected of them! They had no idea how deep the water was. Imagine them trying to do a headcount!
The miracle happened because the Priests did their part. This was a supernatural act of God that could be accomplished by the complete obedience of His people.
The priests had to step in and stay there for everybody else. That’s leadership.
Leaders lead and help navigate God’s people into new ground and fresh seasons providing momentum, enthusiasm and energy. Leaders need to stand firm, and passionately demonstrate faith to take the church where it’s not been before.
Are we waiting for the right time to step out from where we are, looking for everything to be shipshape before we act? Ecclesiastes 11:4 reminds us ‘if you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done’.
Remember the story of the ten lepers in Luke’s Gospel. ‘As they went, they were healed!’ Peter had to obey Jesus to row out into deep water before he caught a boatload of fish.
We like to see it before we believe it … but faith is believing before we see it.
We don’t need to stay in the same place, i.e. a wilderness. The future doesn’t need to be a repetition of the past. Be determined to move from being marooned in the past to marvelling at God’s preferred future for you.
The priests are entrusted to carry the Ark, the most precious object in Israel.
They are to fix their gaze on the Ark. God redirects the focus of their new adventure away from their uncertainties and fears, and helps them centre it on His Consistency. They are to enter Canaan by following the Ark. No longer a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, that was for the wilderness. Always be open and sensitive to fresh expressions of the Spirit.
Jesus said in Luke 17:20/21 that the Kingdom of God doesn’t come by observation, but by what you DO with what God has said. Enlargement doesn’t come until you act.
Too many times we ask God to bless what we are doing, rather than look to join God in what He is doing.
God honours wet feet, not cold feet.
Enjoy the new era of favour and fruit.
Paul Howells