Well, the Israelites have certainly made a lot of progress through the land of Canaan this week. They’ve been demolishing the enemy, and marking out and divvying out newly-conquered territory. In fact, much of the reading this week has been names of conquered territories and kings and geographic markers.
The question becomes, so what? Why does it matter that the king of Jokneam was one of the conquered kings, or that one of the borders of Ephraim was Ataroth Addar? How does this make me more conformed to the image of Christ? I’ve talked in the past about wanting to be more “strategic” in my growth, and I want to take this week’s blog post to sort of think out loud about more specifics about this.
One thing that impresses me about Israel’s conquering of Canaan was how decisive they were. There was no wavering, no “should we go destroy X, or should we destroy Y first?”. They made their decision, and they moved. I can only imagine what that would do to my Christian walk. I think I do a lot of wavering, in terms of “well, I should probably improve in this area, sometime, somehow, that’d be great”. I need to take advantage of these opportunities, while of course considering them carefully at the same time.
Another thing that occurs to me is that of occupancy. They didn’t destroy a city and then just move on. They destroyed it, and then occupied it. They sat on it. As I consider areas of my walk, there are some areas where I’ve grown, and then gotten lax again, essentially evacuating that area to the enemy again. I think I need to keep a map or log of the places that I “occupy” and regularly revisit them to see whether I still occupy them.
They also seem to have done it in small, attainable chunks. They clearly didn’t attack every city at once, but one at a time, systematically, in a sensible order. Seems like an excellent plan for my own growth – methodical, prayerful, but systematic, concrete, and in priority order.
As I ponder this, it seems like the biggest question left to answer is still a difficult one. How do I identify a specific, concrete area to move into next? In some sense, I feel like God more tangibly led Joshua and the Israelites to where to go next. I “merely” have the Word of God. In this matter, it seems like the simplest way to proceed would be to just choose practical Scriptural principles, in areas where the Spirit is leading me to grow, and apply them, one at a time.
Piece of cake, right?
