spiritual warfare | From the Desk of Valson Abraham

How well do we “think God’s thoughts after Him” (Isaiah 55:8-9)? Our willingness and ability to do so determines our destiny to face life’s challenges. Otherwise, we will tend to live more like victims than victors.

We find a good example of this truth in Joshua 12. The Israelites have just faced the greatest challenge of all, the combined armed forces of 31 kings. Those kings included the dreaded King Sihon of the Amorites and the giant King Og of Bashan, known also for his strength, military prowess, handsome looks and charisma. He was so tall he needed a 13-foot bed. Their brutality and arrogance were enough to throw fear into ordinary people.

Ordinary people—that is, people who do not “think God’s thoughts after Him”—simply waver and walk away from such challenges. They doubt promises God gives to them of their Promised Land. They allow visible circumstances to define reality.

But these 31 kings took counsel against the Lord and His people, the Israelites, who had 400 years of the Lord’s promises behind them. What kind of God did the Israelites trust? Psalm 2 tells us that God regards anti-God kings with scorn. Think of a three-year-old child who crowns himself with a paper crown, robes himself in his “blankie” and proclaims himself king of the universe. Even this ridiculous image can never match our Lord’s scorn for 31 godless rulers.

Through many trials, the fickle Israelites under Joshua were coming to think God’s thoughts after Him. What a victory they won!

God looks for those among us who will trust Him for the impossible (1 Chronicles 16:9; Jeremiah 33:3). How often do we laugh in mockery at today’s enemies of God? Or do we merely tremble at them and pray for an escape hatch?

Do we lose sleep over godless enemies’ arrogance, or do we laugh at them knowing that their weapons really come from Satan and are no match for the weapons God has already given us through the cross of Christ? Do we know what our weapons are?

William Carey, the great pioneer missionary of India, preached, “Expect great things of God; attempt great things for God.”

That can happen only when we expect God to do unconventional things with and through unconventional people. Israel’s history is unconventional history. Israel’s history begins through a man and his wife who have a child at 100 and 90 years old. Later, we see Joseph rise from prison to power far from home. Think of the Red Sea miracle, and Joshua’s victories over Jericho, Ai, Adoni-bezek, and the 31 kings. How unconventional can you get?

God specializes in the impossible. He loves for us to trust Him for it. He loves to take weak and foolish people (like us) to confound the “mighty” Sihons and Ogs around us. He seeks weak, foolish and unconventional people, filled with Holy Spirit treasures in their “earthen vessels” to help defeat Satan and his arrogant puppets.

As we face life’s challenges, we do well to remember the example of Joshua and look back at times in our own lives when God did unconventional things in us—how He healed, saved, restored what seemed lost.

Let us think on these things, view our enemies with God’s eyes—and laugh!

The Jericho Principle

Hebrews 11 portrays the miracle of Jericho in Joshua 6 as one of history’s greatest examples of faith.

Perhaps even more miraculous is that this is not just a record of what happened to Israel 3000+ years ago. The miraculous fall of Jericho becomes a template for our own day when we are linked in covenant with Israel’s God through the cross of Jesus Christ. It becomes a timeless model from a timeless God of how we can face our own “Jerichos,” those seemingly impossible foes and insurmountable odds, whatever they may be. Our weapon is our faith in Him.

We all know the story. The Israelites, led by Joshua, approach the walled, fortress-like and hyper-evil city of Jericho. They have no battering rams, catapults, ladders or anything else to break through city gates or scale those high walls.

In obedience to God’s command, the people march in silence around the city once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day. At the sound of the priests’ trumpets, they shout a great shout, and the walls fall flat. The city is taken and all its unspeakably demonic inhabitants are slain.

This great act of faith did not just “happen.” It resulted from the Lord’s preparation of His people beforehand. It resulted from God’s discipline of His people. It involved remembering prior acts of God’s provision and taking account of the evidence. It involved parting with past sins, setting themselves apart for God alone, separating themselves from a victim mentality. We, too, must prepare ourselves ahead of time.

We often say that “God is in control,” but He does not choose to act alone. He did not make those walls crumble until His people got involved in the process. They were not just passive observers of God’s power. Also involved were the angelic armies. But they did not get involved either until God’s people first got themselves right with Him and became willing to obey God. Only then did He and the angelic hosts act.

To have faith meant they had to obey God even when His orders didn’t seem to make sense. Until the miracle at Jericho, no city walls ever fell, or were city gates broken through except with battering rams and other instruments of war. The Israelites could have resisted this seemingly irrational command, but they obeyed. Will we obey God’s sure orders to us when they appear foolish to our families, and even to other church people
and pastors?

In a sermon on Joshua 6, Charles Spurgeon boiled down the essence of faith to three words: work, wait, win. The “Jerichos” that challenge us in life are not the result of men but of our ultimate enemy, Satan. God gives to us weak and flawed people the privilege of joining with Him to defeat that evil one who enslaved us. He wants us to get involved in winning back our own lost “Promised Land.”

In 3000+ years, God has not changed. We are still made in His image. He still requires of us the same kind of faith He required of the Israelites at Jericho. When we prepare ourselves ahead of time as did the Israelites under Joshua, God will, in the words of Paul, “crush Satan under our feet” (Romans 16:20).

From the Desk of Valson Abraham

Tag Archives: spiritual warfare

Learning to Laugh at Giants

The Jericho Principle