Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Words of Encouragement

Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. – Joshua 3:15-16

Walking over on dry ground. Step out in the water. The scripture pauses in the telling of this story to tell us about the condition of the waters. The water is at a flood state. In other words, the water is high and often not contained by the shores. Yet, this is the water they are told to walk across. How can this be, the water is too high? They simply must step out into the waters. They must step in faith knowing the waters will be cut of (we walk by faith, not by sight).

Isn't in interesting that the water didn't stop first? Why do you think that was? I believe it was because God wanted the people to trust Him. So they had to start walking right into what seemed to be an impossible situation. Well that's what God wants us to do. We sometimes try to run or hide from our situations. Sometimes we just wish they would go away. (Well most times). But the Lord wants us to trust Him and walk after Him, even when our situations look like they will over take us.

There are some situations in our lives at time that seem impossible to cross, but God has given us instruction to come and listen to his word. When we do we are given detailed information on what to do and how to proceed. It is interesting to note that God’s instruction was not for them to run away from this impossibility, but to travel toward it. God’s instruction for us is the same. He does not tell us to run away from the impossible situations in our lives but to walk toward them. He tells us to move out of our comfort zone and go towards that which seems impossible. He doesn’t tell us to go alone, however, because he goes before us.

When we come face to face with that thing, he then tells us, step out. He does not move the situation first, he test us to see if we will trust him. When we step out into the waters that seem to be uncontainable, he then shows us he can contain them. God piled the waters up so that the children could step into the water and touch the dry ground.

God will pile up; stop the water from coming in and flooding us so that we can walk through the impossible situations on dry ground. I pray for us this week so that we can know that God has our victory just ahead.