Making Mistakes Work

“And the children of Israel journeyed, and came into their cities on the third day. Now their cities were Bibeon, and Chephirah, and Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim” (Joshua 9:17).

Of all liars religious liars are the worst. Many have come to churches as seekers and after wards to learn they are sneakers. They “love God” and then proceed to tell you of their sad tales of woe, hoping to break hearts and then pick pockets.

This scenario took place in Joshua and Israel’s life. Joshua and the princes of Israel did not ask God for instruction concerning the strangers before them (Josh. 9:14). They were duped and deceived by the enemies of God. They traveled to them as people who sought after their God because they were afraid Israel would kill and destroy them, so they lied.

Though deceived the lies were there, but the people of God stood by their vow of protection and took the cities in but made them servers of the people of God. When we do something wrong by not taking heed to God’s Word and follow our own intuition, we still can go to God and do what is right.

God is able to make even those things which were not in wisdom and work them out for our good. Since we fail we must not stay down but get back up and follow God. We are to take the ploy and reinstall our lives to His benefit. That is the power of the third day. Because of the resurrection of Christ, the Lord is able to make all things abound!

Similar Posts

  • Praying the Bible

    “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”  (Acts 4:31).

    On the cross the Lord Jesus only said out loud seven brief things. The Romans had flayed His back until it was ribboned and torn, and was seen by every eye that passed by. Severely dehydrated, His entire body weight hanging on three nails that held Him to the wood, the Lord of love had to push himself upward to be able to talk, and then only briefly before releasing and settling downward.

    Understandably, then, everything Jesus spoke from the cross was important. And as He lifted himself up each time I am convinced that He prayed through the verses of Psalm 22. As He weighed back downward, wrestling on those nails, He continued to pray silently through Psalms 22. Oh! How that pangs my heart. Yet, oh, how, it rejoices my soul! His first prayer from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The last prayer was from Psalm 31:5, “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.”

    Jesus prayed the Psalms. The final act of His earthly life was to pray the words of a psalm, the Word of the Bible. Friends, if the Lord Jesus prayed the psalms and the Bible, and the early church prayed the psalms should we not do as well? There is power in praying the Bible.

  • Is God on America’s Side?

    “Are you for us, or for our adversaries? No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord” (Joshua 5:13-14).

    Is God an American?  Is He a Republican?  Is He a Democrat?  Is God King and Defender of our nation?  In Christian thought God has been often invoked for political ends, but history shows He will not be so used.

    We are not just another country, but neither are we God’s chosen people.  We should not believe that America is God’s chosen nation.  God established one chosen nation and people:  the Jews.  We are not Israel.  We are not God’s gift to the world.

    There is no doubt we drink from wells we did not dig and we eat fruit from trees we did not plant.  We will no doubt be judged nationally and individually with stricter judgment for “unto whom much is given, much is required.”  We expect blessing, but we have done plenty to expect judgment.

    Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, was asked whether God was on his side and he replied, “I do not care whether God is on my side; the important question is whether I am on God’s side, for God is always right.”

    Our greatest gift to this country is to return to biblical priorities of the church, and, more importantly, in so doing we will be pleasing to our Heavenly Father.

  • Perpetual Joy

    “And the clean person shall sprinkle upon the unclean on the third day, and on the seventh day: and on the seventh day he shall purify himself, and wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and shall be clean at even” (Numbers 19:19).

    We can not be part-time Christians. We are all in full-time Christian service, or we should be. A man who is faithful to his wife most of the time is not faithful at all. A man who is a Christian and something else is not a Christian in deed.

    Have you noticed that birds do not sing because they have an answer, they sing because they have a song. When sin has touched us we are deadened and saddened. Yet God has made a way for us to be cleansed from all defilement.

    God has given you the power of the third day for continual cleansing and joyful singing. Wash yourselves in the ongoing work of the cross of Christ. Out of His wounded side flows the blood and the water. Confess and turn back to your God today for the song He gives.

  • A Worthful Church

    “Ye sent unto John, and he bore witness unto the truth” (John 5:33).

    The duty and delight of every Christian is to bear witness to the truth. Our behavior and our beliefs are to be saturated by the Spirit of God. When we are living by God’s Word in the keeping, drawing power of God, then we are bearing witness to God’s Son who lives! We choose to flesh out what has been worked in by dependence upon God’s Spirit.

    John bore witness to Christ. He bore testimony to the Son of God. There can be no shining if there is no burning. John burned for Christ and was passionate about the Spirit’s work in his own life. The flesh was burned away and the Spirit of God burned within.

    A.W. Tozer said, “If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.”

    Churches are only as powerful as their dependence upon the Holy Spirit. We can say that any man who is bored with church work and worship is not ready for Heaven. People of God are renewed daily by the inward pressure of the Spirit of God who leads. He does not drive. The external situation or climate dictates to the leader of a family, a Sunday School class, a work place, or a church, that God desires to move in! And to take over! And To change it! This is a man/woman who lives in God.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Pleasure Seekers

    “Woe unto them…and the harp, and the lute, the timbres, and flute, and wine, are in their feasts; but they regard not the work of the LORD, neither consider the operation of his hands”  (Isaiah 5:11-12).

     

    There is a way that seems right unto man, but afterwards it yields death. When mankind refuses to recognize the operation or the working of the will of God, then he or she will find death and loss at the end of their pleasure seeking.

     

    There are too many people, especially the youth of today, who are in desperate need of some mentors who will love them to Jesus. God is looking for someone to get up from the table and work with the God of orphans. There are too many women who have been abused by men’s lusts. God is looking for someone to come alongside and to love them to the bosom of Christ.

     

    America and other countries are in a stupor. They are drunken with pleasure While we take our pleasure trips, buy our modern things, God is looking for someone to stand in the gap. It takes a wise man to recognize that the ways of the world are coming to an end.

     

    It is God who gave us all things to enjoy. And it is God who will take it away. Push yourself away from the table of pleasure and go get someone and feed them the bread of life.

     

  • Ransacked

    “And he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king’s house; he even took away all. And he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made” (I Kings 15:26).

    Israel was once a powerhouse of divine wealth. But then the nation plunged into evil by allowing idolatry and apostasy to stagnate their lives. They slid in and swam into a cesspool of evil and sinfulness with glee.

    There was a king by the name of Shishak. He was king of Egypt. On the heels of apostasy Jerusalem was attacked. This devilish King came and took the treasures of the house of the Lord away.

    All over our land today are hearts and homes and churches who were once rich in prayer, the Word of God, good works, joy, but now they are ransacked and barren because Shishak has stolen the treasures of the Lord from the people of God.

    It is time to return to the Lord with acknowledgement of sin. We are dusting ourselves off instead of confessing our sin. How can we teach transgressors God’s ways until we profess our great lack? May God help us to see our exposed sin that sinners see and we do not. There is hope when our hope is in God. May God lay His axe to the root of our lives by His Word and by His Spirit.