Wednesday is for Prayer
Listen to the Voice of God. (Joshua 1:1-9)
As you listen to his voice,
God will give you direction (2-4).
He will remind you of his promises (5).
He will tell you of great truths (5-9).
“Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your territory.”
Don’t expect God to speak to you audibly, as it appears he did in this instance with Joshua. But I promise you, God will speak to you as you seek his voice in his written word. He will meet you in the pages of his word as you pour out your soul to him. How do I know that? Three lines of evidence: The promises of God, my own personal experience and the experience of others who have tested his word. Let’s look at Jeremiah 29:13-14 (ESV) at one of God’s promises to Israel, and one that is ours as well.
You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
The promise is that God will let himself be found by us when we seek him with all our hearts. God delights to unveil his glory to the heart that seeks after him. Joshua needed the living God to speak and give new direction and affirm him as the man for the job at hand.
There is something about desperation and fear of the unknown that is powerfully effective in driving us to seek God in an undistracted way. Martin Luther said that it was affliction that made him a better interpreter of the Bible. It drove him to his knees and to his study and God met him there.
And the day I came to that realization I remembered a couple of passages in Psalm 119. Here they are:
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.(Ps. 119:67)It is good for me that I was afflicted
that I might learn your statutes.(Ps. 119:71)I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. (Ps. 119:75)
But to listen, you have to stop talking. You have to stop planning. You have to stop doing. make sure you take some time to listen to the voice of God in the midst of your affliction before your affliction becomes even greater.
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