The Promise Still Stands
This is gonna be a mixture of something God's put on my heart and a form of my story of the last year of my life and I'll try and make it short. Last year I thought I was going to stop short of ministry. I'm sure by now, most of you know the story. My dad wanted me to go to USC, study business, take over his company and be well off while I wanted to go to UW, study whatever, intern at Overlake and then go into ministry. There was one argument between me and my dad that was so bad that the only thing I remember was being in my room for a few days not really talking or interacting with anyone. I didn't want to eat (those of you who know me know this is huge alone) and I was just really sad. I'd given up. I was waving a white flag, asking God when? When are you going to deliver me from this? How much longer? That answer hasn't come to me until now.
Joshua lead the Israelites after 40 years of wandering to Jericho, to where God had promised them deliverance:
"Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors. You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead.”
-Joshua 6:1-5
When you look in verse 1, it says that "Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel". They were afraid because they knew God was on their side. The fierceness of the opposition in your life is proof of the power of God’s promise. I was too focused on questioning God's method. Look at verse 2, "The Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors". He told Joshua that He'd already delivered Jericho into the hands of the Israelites. The battle I was fighting with my dad was already won.
So why keep me holding on for so long? Why make me keep walking? The battle has already been won.
For the Israelites, 40 years of wandering, 6 days of marching, but nothing moved. This is also the same reason why I hate exercise. I want progress of the work I’m doing immediately. I’d be doing curls all day if veins kept popping out of my arms and my biceps began to inflate in front of my eyes. But we walk by faith and not by sight. I had to ask myself, will I keep walking even when it doesn’t seem to be working? If I got an answer during prayer every time I prayed I’d be bumping into stuff all day long praying. But the question I needed to ask myself was do I believe that God is still moving when the wall itself hasn’t moved? How do I know God is going to deliver on His promise when nothing looks like the way I'd thought it'd be?
But I was completely missing the point. Obedience is my responsibility, outcome is God’s.
It's in the wandering, it's the walking, in the “how much longer” that my faith has developed. This last year, I've grown a lot stronger in my faith because of my hardship. This is the time where I learned that the promise still stands. Even if the wall is standing between you and the promise, the promise still stands. Joshua didn’t tell his soldiers what the end goal was. He never once mentions that the walls will fall down after marching around 7 times. He just tells them to simply just march. The 1st day is probably fine, but after awhile I think they started to question it. In the same way, I think we do too. We don’t mind the walking, but we didn’t think it’d take this long. Why am I walking and its not working?
If God let us in on the first lap, we'd think it was our walking that brought us in. We'd think it was our shout that brought the walls down. God needs us to have the faith to take another lap, another lap, another lap and just keep going. When we give up, God says we're ready and brings down the walls. And that's when God brought down the walls. I was waving my white flag in surrender, God I'm done. And that's when I got the opportunity to come visit UW and show my dad the school, and that's when he decided to let me go here. And now I'm working with Overlake, and just recently, my dad dropped the whole business/law school grad school deal and is letting me go to seminary wherever I want. I'm currently looking into Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is in Texas, and honestly I hate Texas. Nothing against it, just its so flat and I feel so landlocked. The food is great though not gonna lie. But I need to remember, obedience, not outcome. God's taken me this far and hasn't failed me yet. He's moved mountains in my life and I know he can do it again. If someone told me last year that I am where I am today, I'd probably laugh. But now I know:
His Promise Still Stands