Be Strong and Courageous!

This past Sunday I shared some of the prophetic words we believe God has been speaking to Bognor Vineyard, and invited people to respond. We’re thrilled that so many shared with us at and after the meeting! The full list of words is over 7 pages long, and even the condensed summary is 4 pages, so I’ve included a link to the summary below, followed by a reflection on Joshua 1-6. Here are the three themes shared by multiple people from the meeting last Sunday:

• Risk and don't fear

• God will do amazing things and many people will come to Jesus

• God will do it

Be Strong and Courageous

I wonder what it would have been like for an eager Israelite warrior who had grown up in the desert waiting to enter the Promised Land. He had waited his entire life for this, so how would he have experienced two seemingly competing realities: their need to depend on God to take action according to his unrushed pace alongside God’s command for them to be strong and take action.

In Joshua 1, God said to Joshua four times, ‘Be strong and courageous!’  He spoke of the extent of the territory he would give to them, his faithfulness to them (‘As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you... the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.’), and the importance of obeying everything he had commanded. And yet God seemed to take his time. When Joshua said that it they would enter the land in three days, it took about seven. It probably took days for all the people to cross the Jordan after God stopped the river flowing, and they waited again so all twelve tribes could build a memorial for what God had done. They waited to circumcise themselves and celebrate Passover. And when they finally reached their first battle at Jericho, they didn’t attack immediately, but marched around the city walls for seven days before God collapsed the walls.

Instead of being concerned about rushing to their destination, God took his time to bind his people to himself so that they were fully dependent on him. They were bound through consecration before they entered the land, through their bodies (circumcision), and the celebration of God’s past work (Passover) and current work (memorial). By doing what they could not do–stopping the Jordan River and bringing down the walls of Jericho–he showed them how their will needed to be fully bound to his will.

We believe God is already ‘advancing’ us, but instead of being concerned with the destination, we should continue responding to the ways God is binding us to himself as he brings us into blessing.

(For the entire text, see Be Strong and Courageous linked above)