He is with you
I remember several years back, before we came to Illinois, we were in a life group with some friends that have moved out here.
One of them serves on staff. I'm not going to name names, but uh, he does the greeting sometimes.
It rhymes with Ryan.
We were at their place, and we were having life group around a campfire one evening. We were having a good time, a really good time, and everything was going well to that point, as I recall.
And then, all of a sudden, I heard a bunch of rustling behind a neighbor's privacy fence.
And I thought, "Well, that's odd. Like, surely they're hearing this too." But they're just kind of going on with their conversation as if they didn't hear a single thing.
And now I'm like, "Man, they're up to something because now I can see, like, low-level cackling and chuckling and that sort of thing." But I digress.
You know, I wasn't going to be the party pooper, so we just kind of kept going on with our conversation.
And when all of a sudden, I see this figure come over the fence.
Y'all, I need to describe this figure to you in depth: Carhartt, scary clown mask.
And as you can imagine, I was the one that this beast had targeted, right? And so, he walks right over to me.
Like, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
I am terrified.
I am paralyzed in fear right now.
He puts his hand on my shoulder, and it's in this moment where I'm like, fight or flight, y'all. Like, I gotta do something.
Do I swing at this thing or do I take off running? And that is when he pulled his mask off, and I realized, y'all, it was an elder in our church.
Do you know how close I was to throwing hands with an elder in the church? Never a good idea.
But my point is this: so many times in our own lives, we live in fear of what's around the corner.
Do we move, or do we stand still, knowing the outcome is not in our control? And this is a position that the Israelites found themselves in.
But this is a promise that Joshua rested on: God's people can move forward in God's will and be assured of God's presence in it.
Here's what it looks like at street level: in sickness, in singleness, in the loss of a job, in loneliness, in getting passed over for a promotion, or infertility, or a struggle with school, or praying for a loved one to come to faith, God is with us.
God is already in that waiting room, that God is already in that ICU room or in the courtroom or in the boardroom or in that lonely living room, even in a funeral home.
But what we find here is that God doesn't give Joshua a bunch of complicated explanations as to how he's going to accomplish all these things, because there's a reality in all of this, and we must be mindful of this ourselves: God's people live on God's promises, not on human explanations.
You see, when we trust God's promises, and we step out in faith, we can be sure that the Lord will give you the instructions you need when you need them.
So let's drill a little deeper. Let's make this personal.
What is it for you? What or where is God calling you? Maybe it's right here.
Maybe it's a place you never imagined, a job that you had never really given any thought to, a ministry that God keeps prodding you to.
Like, what is it that you have become so afraid of?
You see, Joshua understands this reality, and we desperately need to as well: that God's promises are not pillows but prods.
When God says go, we go.
Warren Weirsby said,
It is impossible to be inactive in the Christian faith, for when you stand still, you immediately begin going backward.
I want to say this again: like Joshua's new job consisted of leading two million people into a strange new land and conquering it.
Turns out, the Bible that I read doesn't indicate a welcoming committee was waiting for them either.
I mean, think about it. So many times in our lives, God calls us to step out in faith, but we exert more energy and effort making excuses than we do living in obedience.
We focus more on our problems than resting in God's promises.
I mean, if we were in this situation, we would have a lot of cause for pause, right? Isn't this how we live?
Like, we just look for a way out, send a text to let him know you're not going to go, blame it on kids, or we say we're sick, or whatever we do to get out of it.
Isn't it wild how it's so simple for you and I to find a thousand different reasons to say no? But when God says go, you go. It is an act of rebellion to delay what God has told you to do.
We've been through this before, right?
Delayed obedience is disobedience.
But I think it's part of a core problem within each of us, if we're completely honest at times. We want the kingdom without the King. But there's Kingdom work to be done.
God says, "I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you." But I don't know that a lot of this matters if we don't believe it to be true.
Like, at your core, deep down in your guts, do you really believe that in all things, God is good and that God can be trusted?
Like, we've got to stop playing games with faith.
This isn't about faking it until we make it.
I mean, isn't it wild, you guys, how people who call themselves Christians have done this before? We know all the right things to say, but we're not willing to endure the work of a courageous faith.
I remember as a kid, math, and still today, has never been, never will be, my favorite subject.
Never, ever, ever, ever will be.
And I feel like I've been a bit justified in my distaste for math in a lot of ways. I mean, I remember in middle school and in high school, teachers lecturing me, saying things like, "Dusty, you know that when you get older, you're not going to always have a calculator with you wherever you go." Turns out, she was wrong.
But I specifically remember one day in my high school algebra class, this was perhaps the most amazing discovery in my academic career. I realized that in the back of the textbook, which I didn't open very often, were the answers to all the problems. Suddenly, y'all, my academic progress in algebra class skyrocketed through the roof, baby. To the point where, like, I mean, I was getting 100 on all of my homework. It was absolutely incredible.
And one day, my algebra teacher, I shouldn't name names, but I'm going to, Mrs. [redacted], took notice. And she pulled me over to the side, and I thought, "Oh, this is going to be awesome. Like, I felt like I failed her so many times, but I think today, she's going to be really proud of me. She's probably going to elevate me to, like, Advanced Algebra or something like that."
But it wasn't the case. I remember her saying to me, "Dusty, you have all the right answers, but I need to see your work."
You see, a faith that cannot be tested cannot be trusted.
As Christians, we become really good at saying all the right things, having all the right answers, yet we're not willing to endure the work of a courageous faith. We know what to say, but we have no evidence of the labor of our faith.
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