Soul Searching

Soul searching is not in its true form supposed to be a comfortable process. The very term defies comfort. We are usually not in the habit of using a word like comfort when we embrace introspection. Most of us know what we have buried inside the dark caverns of who we are, and illuminating those areas only magnifies the initial reason for their burial.

In truth, it is out of the depths of what we have sometimes feared, that we have been afforded the kiss of greatness. We are being led into a promised land. We are not here by chance. God be praised who has given us the honor of living in this time, for this purpose. For many of us, this passage marks the end of an era of wilderness experiences inflicted on us by the doubt of a religious system. A system of religious traditions that provide a sense of measured comfort in exchange for the supernatural direction of the Holy Spirit. As the Israelites prepared to end their wilderness pilgrimage of forty years there were distinct commands given regarding the passage over the Jordan river into the land of Canaan.

God commanded that Joshua choose a man from each tribe of the Twelve Tribes of Isreal. Each of the selected men was to pick up a stone from the dry river-bed after the Priests and the Ark of the Covenant had stopped in the center of the river which God had dried up. The river was overflowing all of its banks from the harvest rains, yet God said to walk into it! The Priests stepped in bearing the Ark, and the waters parted. God’s people passed through into their “promised land” and the selected twelve men each retrieved a stone from the river and carried it to the other side.

God wanted a memorial built out of the impossibility He had opened before His people. Your impossible situation is going to provide you with the elements you need to erect a memorial to God’s abundant provision. The probabilities are stacked against you. The odds speak of your imminent demise. Everybody knows that you cannot do what you say you are going to do! But God has spoken. He will not fail you. Step out in faith. Watch the impossible fade with the miracle of God’s word acted upon in faith! Your children are going to see the memorial of your faith and be encouraged to know God will do what He speaks!

There must have been a flurry of activity surrounding the events of Joshua 4:1-24. So much had happened in rapid succession leading up to this moment. Moses had passed, Joshua has assumed leadership, the wilderness experience was coming to a close. The Isrealites were camped near the river; spies had already been sent to Jericho, and they were ready to possess the land of their promise. You could sense the excitement of this young generation who had lived their lives up to this moment with the realization of their ancestors unbelief, and the expectation of their own destiny to occupy the land God had promised. How many of us are carrying the sins of our fathers, and the promise of our children’s heritage? We must not miss the precedents of passage that have been set in this transition from wilderness to promise. God affirms the promises given to Moses in the leadership of Joshua, “As I was with Moses so shall I be with You.” Next, God allows His hidden allies in the promise land to be revealed, and Rahab assists the Isrealite spies from being discovered. Joshua then commands the people to follow that Ark of the Covenant at a respectable distance for this reason; “You have not passed this way before.” The Priests carry the Ark into the river and the flooded waters recede and stand up to allow dry passage from the wilderness into the promise land. One man from each Tribe carries a stone from the center of the riverbed to the promise side to build and altar that would serve to memorialize the provision of God in the passage.

The sense of God’s awesome power had to be overwhelming. The waters towering, the people passing over, twelve men building a memorial, Priests standing with the Ark in the river, so many incredible acts simultaneously unfolding. Sometimes in the midst of God’s greatness, as it is unfolding in rapid succession, we could miss significant the most actions if we are not careful to regard each individual God has placed in our lives. Where is Joshua during this pageantry of providence? Except for one sentence in the whirling array of verses we would never know. Joshua 4:9 And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the Priest who bore the Ark stood. Something was so important to Joshua that he had to create his own memorial.

I don’t know what Joshua’s altar meant to him personally, but because he was human like us maybe we can look at ourselves and discover his motive. Was it a boundary for past doubt? Could it have been a memorial to the guilt he felt for Moses’ inability to finish the task he was now assigned with? Did Joshua build this altar simply to mark, from his own heart, a distinct moment of passage from faith to faith? We will never know the answers to these questions. However, we can answer a more important question. In this time of passage in your own life, what altar are you feeling compelled to build? While others are enamored with the transition process you are being drawn to pause and reflect. It’s okay. This altar of personal consecration you are constructing will never be destroyed. Like Joshua’s altar in the riverbed, it will remain forever to mark your commitment.