Love of progress

As Americans we love progress; we love moving forward. It was a desire for progress that settled the West and landed us on the moon. We set a goal and move towards it. Desire for progress and moving forward is good. We serve a God of progress, who has a plan for history. However, the way God goes about progress often differs from how we go about it.

The message this weekend at Nativity is about the battle of Jericho and the preparations leading to Israel conquering the city. God gives Joshua and the Israelites several instructions of how they are to prepare for the battle. I read through last night the first 6 chapters of Joshua and found two instructions pretty interesting.

The first instruction was that representatives from each of the 12 tribes are to bring a stone with them from the Jordan River as a reminder of what God did for them. He tells them in Joshua 4:6-7, “When your children ask in a time to come, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ Then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the sons of Israel a memorial forever.” The stone reminds them to look back to the past on the faithfulness of God.

Then he gives another instruction before the battle takes place; God gives a strange command. He tells the men to be circumcised. The timing seems odd, but the action was a reminder of the promise he had sworn to Abraham that his descendants would possess the land of Canaan, the land Joshua and the Israelites were moving to conquer. The sign of Abraham’s covenant was circumcision. Every male had to be circumcised. In asking the Israelites to be circumcised, he was calling to mind the promise of the past and that he is a God that keeps his promises. He will bring to fruition his promises in his time, if not ours.

I read this week that we often see God’s presence and involvement in our lives only in retrospect. Only by looking back on our lives do we see God’s presence and activity in our lives. We often get so concerned about the destinations that we forget God. Instead, we just try and push forward on our own. The battle we fight is not over whether we will get where God wants us to go. If we follow God’s lead, he will get us to the good places he has in store for us as is seen by the incredible story told in Joshua 6. The destination is secure if we go where God is leading. The battle is whether we stick with God through the process. God leads us through a process that is not just about getting somewhere, but about changing us into people who trust completely in him and walk in his ways.