Joshua Enters The Promised Land: Pt. 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. As you head into this Wednesday, don’t forget the most important thing in your life is your relationship with God, and the most important way to develop and grow your relationship with God is to start your day with some relational time with God.

Maybe you think, well, how can I have a relational time with God? He’s so distant from me and separated from me.

But in reality, if you have started a living relationship with God by putting your faith in Jesus and what He’s done for you on the cross, the Bible says you’ve become part of God’s family. You’ve been adopted as His son or His daughter, and He wants the kind of relationship with you like a little child has with their daddy.

So let’s start this day by listening to God first. That’s relational. And then by talking to Him. That’s relational too. We listen to God by reading His word, the Bible, and this week we’re spending time at the very beginning of the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. The nation of Israel has been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. God has promised them the land that He’s going to give them.

And now they’ve arrived there. They’re about to go into the promised land, and Joshua pulls together the leaders of the people, and this is what he says to them in chapter 1 verse 10.

Joshua commanded the officers of the people. Pass through the midst of the camp and command the people. Prepare your provisions, for within 3 days you are to pass over this Jordan River to go in to take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

And to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, those are tribes of the nation of Israel, Joshua said, Remember the word that Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded you, saying, The Lord your God is providing you a place of rest and will give you this land.

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Your wives, your little ones, and your livestock shall remain in the land that Moses gave you beyond the Jordan. But all the men of valor among you shall pass over armed before your brothers and shall help them until the Lord gives rest to your brothers as He has to you. And they also take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving them.

So, these few tribes had already taken possession of the parts of the promised land that were for them, and they were going to help the rest. But I just want you to notice the terminology that Joshua gives. He says, the Lord your God is providing you a place of rest.

Now you’re going to go and fight with your brothers until the Lord gives rest to your brothers as He has to you.

Later on in the New Testament, as the writer of the book of Hebrews talks to believers in the New Testament who are in relationship with Jesus Christ, it talks about this place of rest that God wants to bring to Christians in their life.

And notice it’s the Lord your God who provides you a place of rest. I wonder where you are in your life right now. Are you in a place of frantic activity? Or are you in a desperate place in your life?

Have all the lights seemed to have receded into the distance, and you just feel like you’re in a place of darkness and you can’t see any way forward, you know, I’ve been in that place. Does everything seem hopeless? You can’t imagine a way forward.

I want you to know that whether things are great for you right now or whether things are really tough for you right now, there is a place of rest, that is, there is a place in your relationship with God where no matter what else is going on around you, you can be at peace in your inner life. God wants you to experience that place of rest.

It only comes when you acknowledge to Him, God, I can’t do anything about this. I can’t handle this. I’m helpless. As long as you keep trying to push on in your own strength, you’ll keep on struggling. But when you come to the end of yourself and you say, OK, God. I can’t do this. I give up. But I trust you.

And I let go of those things in my life that I know are not pleasing to you, and I grab hold of those things I know you want in my life.

Then you will find yourself coming into that place of unexplainable rest that only He can bring you.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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