Spiritual Backup

When Moses died, God appointed a man called Joshua as his successor to lead the “Children of Israel” across the Jordan River into the Promised Land at a point not far from the walled city of Jericho. Having accomplished this crossing, Joshua was approaching Jericho when he met a man with a drawn sword, which was very

confronting and would have been the equivalent of the soldier we see in this photo. Joshua challenged the man by demanding to know “are you friend or foe?” His reply was most unexpected: “Neither one”, he said “I am the commander of the Lord’s army.” This answer must have baffled Joshua somewhat; it certainly baffled me when I first read it, (how could the Lord’s soldier be neutral?) and then I remember seeing a German soldier’s belt from the first world war and on the clasp were the words: “Got mitt uns” (I think that was how it was spelt) which in English would be “God is with us”. However the English and French claimed that God was with them. Now, you can't have it both ways. Or can you?

 In the finality it is not a matter of asking whose side God is on, but we should be asking “whose side are we on?” In other words have we accepted God’s  offer of forgiveness for sin, and in what we are doing now, are our thoughts and behaviour patterns in keeping with the instructions given to us in the Bible, (which would then place us on God’s side), or  could it be that we are deceiving ourselves by "doing our own thing" and asking God to  bless what we are doing? and then wonder why God doesn't answer our prayer.  When Joshua realised who the man was, he “fell with his face to the ground in reverence. ‘I am at your command’, Joshua said. ‘What do you want your servant to do’? The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy’. And Joshua did as he was told.” (Joshua 5:14). Now the Lord’s Envoy in saying that was really asking for an outward and visible sign of an inward and Spiritual cleansing commitment. Removing our dirty shoes should also remind us to remove unholy thoughts.

We seem to often have the attitude that God is there to serve us and that we can "walk" straight into His Holy presence, bringing with us all our physical and Spiritual dirt, without even apoligising. We probably have this attitude because we treated our parents that way and got away with it. However with God we are approaching the King of the universe who is Holy, and can only approach Him because of His grace. Paul in the 12^th chapter of his letter to the Romans expressed it this way: “I beseech ye therefore brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Whereas our attitude is often like the little boy who prayed: “my name is Jimmy and I will take all that you can gimme”. Thus, like Jimmy, we come to prayer with a long “shopping list” of things we want God to do for us which is really just like “shopping on line”.

 However if we are His servants we should first humbly ask Him in prayer to forgive us (in Jesus name) for any sin of thought, word or deed we have committed (so we are then clean to approach Him), and ask Him to show us who He wants us to help today and to show us how we can best achieve that? Then we can make our personal requests (almost as an afterthought). Indeed Jesus is quoted in Matthew 6:33 as saying “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”. So just as Joshua didn’t have any trouble conquering the city of Jericho when he showed humility to the commander of the Lord’s Army, so we are assured by Jesus that if we get our priorities right everything else will fall into place for us too.

 We need the help and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit to achieve this, and the good thing is that God wants our bodies to be fit Temples for His Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19 & 20); how good is that?, but if we are going to invite a Holy guest like Him to live in our body so that we will be able to project the “Fruit of the Spirit”, (Galatians 5: 22)“Love, joy, peace, faith, longsuffering, gentleness, kindness, goodness and self-control”), we had better first remove the rubbish from our “temple” as Jesus did when He cleaned out the Temple of God in Jerusalem. “Pursuing holiness” is essential (Hebrews 12:14). After all, we don’t expect a guest to stay in a dirty room, do we? And of course we should then endeavour to keep our “temple” clean.     Best wishes with that,  Tom.