Gilgal

Something I shared with my small group last Tuesday was how God recently reminded me of a passage that I studied several years ago. The particular passage comes from Joshua 3-4, when the Israelites cross the Jordan into the "Promised Land," where they were about to confront the Canaanites and fight many wars in order to claim the land God promised them.

I studied this passage in college as part of Beth Moore's "Believing God" series, and shortly after I completed that series, I started this blog. One significant detail in that passage, to me, is the name of the town where the Israelites camp after crossing the Jordan: Gilgal. In Hebrew, this word is a variant of the word that means "wheel" or "circle."  That particular translation was relevant to me last week when I came across this passage, but I also realize it is relevant even in me writing in this blog. I started this 3 years ago (or so), because I wanted to chronicle my walk with God and the ways I was "believing Him" to lead me and guide me. Now, I am writing to publish what he has taught me and is teaching me. I don't post often, but I keep coming back.

I won't go into many details here in public forum, but 3 years ago when I studied this passage, I was getting ready to have a difficult conversation with someone in my life. I was nervous about it. I didn't know what to do or say, but I knew I needed to confront the person and hear his side of the story. So I did. And I got through it! It wasn't easy, but it wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected it to be. Earlier this month, I was getting ready to have another, fairly similar, difficult converation with the same person. I just happened to be reading through Joshua at the time. I was reminded of this passage, and then the time in my life when I studied it. It encouraged me to look back and remember how far God brought me. Again, the conversation was not easy, but I got through it. It wasn't as difficult as I expected it to be.

As I was reading this time, though, a new connection developed in my brain. I thought about the story of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea (Exodus 14) and compared/contrasted with when they crossed the Jordan. Some interesting stuff is there. I won't blab on and on about it, but feel free to look it up and leave comments if you want to make this a discussion. Be encouraged today, I am.

Learning...

I thought I'd take a minute and write about what I've been learning, particularly in the past 2 days...I know it's a short amount of time, but I feel like I'm being blindsided (maybe that's what I need...), so I'll write about it.

Here's the context:
I've been reading Breaking Free by Beth Moore since about November (thanks, Hil ;-) )...The chapters are short and I tend to read it in spurts. She writes very well. A quote that stood out last night was this:

"The only way we can love with agape [unconditional love] is to pour everything else from our hearts and ask God to make them pitchers of his agape."

For the past couple weeks, I have also been reading The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg. This is part of a small discussion group through my [new] church..they started it on Ash Wednesday, and met once a week during lent. I started going to the group on Palm Sunday. Lol. Anyway, they are now meeting only once a month, but I want to continue and catch up with the group. I really enjoy the book so far. It's very dense, and requires much chewing (figuratively speaking...although it is a hard-cover book... ;-) ). Anyway, the chapter that I read last night was called, "Training vs. Trying." It was all about how following Jesus is not about trying to be more like him and striving to be more like him (for this means we are doing it by our own power and/or willpower), but it is something to be done through training (and the guidance of the Spirit). Training is different because it provides us with practice in Godly ways to respond in life's circumstances.

"Our primary task is not to calculate how many verses of scripture we read or how many minutes we spend in prayer. Our task is to use these activities to create opportunities for God to work. Then what happens is up to him."

I think that in recent times I have been striving, trying very hard to be more prayerful, more intentional, more loving. What has happened is I've become more irritable, more frustrated, and more exhausted. It's not supposed to be like this.

One more time I have been reminded of training was at church today. My pastor, speaking in the context of Acts 1:6-11 when the disciples were asking Jesus when the time will come for his kingdom on earth, said that we cannot know. We spend much of our lives waiting for one thing or another, thinking, "is it time yet?" What do we do now? Pastor's response was, "Train yourself. Prepare yourself. Right now, are you preparing yourself for what God has in store for you?"

My answer to that? probably not. My big questions of God recently have been "Is it time to move out of Michigan? Is it time to live on my own? Is it time to teach and be solely responsible for a child's education for a whole year?"

It's almost time for at least some of those things...

I need to start training, slowing down and separating myself from the cares of the world in order to train for life's circumstances. I think I need a date night with Jesus...