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.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the Sky:
Hunter's or Blood Moon (Super Moon
because it's close)
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