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What's Your Strategy?


 
            Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the  king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.”
                So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘They are running away from us as they did before.’ So when we flee from them, you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The LORD your God will give it into your hand.  When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the LORD has commanded. See to it; you have my orders.”  Then Joshua sent them off, and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and Ai, to the west of Ai—but Joshua spent that night with the people. (Joshua 8:1-9)
 
            The "Promised Land" for which we're fighting is in us. It is our thoughts, our feelings, and our wills. The enemy is sin in any of its myriad forms. The small force (three thousand men) sent on the first attack, in a face to face confrontation didn't work. It didn't work because the Israelites weren't working with God and that, of course, is the vital, critical, most important thing. I understand that, but what I want to point out is that God's strategy is not always a straight-forward, in-your-face confrontation. The Israelites probably surrounded Jericho and attacked from all sides. In today's passage, God directed them to lure the Aians out and attack from behind and in front.
            I find myself wondering about my strategy for dealing with my sin. First, I suspect that I don't send a big enough army. Secondly, I suspect that I tend to use the same strategy over and over, and I'd be willing to bet it's an "in-your-face" confrontational style. OK, I really suspect it's not so much a confrontation as it is my asking them nicely to go away one day, and inviting them to stay the next  but at my strongest, it's probably a straight-forward confrontation.
          What would it look like to circle a sin for seven days, effectively surrounding it and attacking it from all sides? What would it look like to set an ambush - to only appear to flee or submit until the ambush has done its work? How would one ambush a sin? One possibility would be to work with a fellow saint. I have a friend whose strategy to stop smoking involved keeping the cigarettes under (or perhaps in - I don't recall) her Bible. If she could not say "no" to them on her own, she had to move the Bible to get to them. That helped her.
        I'm not sure of the specifics of the alternate strategies. What works for one person with one sin on one occasion might not work for another person, or the same person with that same sin (or another) on another occasion. The key is to keep communicating with the Commander of the Lord's army and follow the strategy God gives, even if it seems bizarre.
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In the Sky:
Hunter's or Blood Moon (Super Moon because it's close)

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