By today, I have read through Joshua chapter 16 and I hope those who are reading with me have kept up too! I want to jump back to chapter 10 which is probably my favorite chapter thus far in the Old Testament. I love it because it shows Joshua’s faith, God’s power, and God’s control over His own creation.

Joshua’s Faith:
Take a look at the whole chapter to get the jist of the events unfolding. Joshua is leading the Israelites in victory after victory as they are conquering the Promise Land and defeating the pagan nations in their way. Verse 8 says that the Lord told Joshua outright that they would defeat the enemy and not to fear one bit. Easier said than done, right? Not for Joshua for he had seen the Lord come through time after time and this instance was no different. So, to buy them more time for victory, Joshua just plainly commanded the sun to stand still-and it did!

Joshua 10:12-14
12 On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: “O sun, stand still over Gibeon, O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies, as it is written in the Book of Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!

Now, please don’t miss read this. Joshua, in no way himself, made the sun stand still. He simply had the faith to speak it knowing God would make it happen.

God’s power over His creation:
The Lord stopped that sun just as Joshua asked. But, think about it… He basically stopped the rotation of the earth and the orbit around the sun. You might be thinking: so what? So, what do you think happens when the earth stops its rotation and orbit-probably chaos! God made this earth to function so precisely. Its like the dials on an old car radio. He set the dial specifically to sustain life on this planet. Dials of gravitational force, atoms and particle size, amount of gases in the atmosphere, and many more factors, some that we won’t ever even know about. In Joshua 10, God adjusts these dials to accomplish His purposes-He is the creator and can do any thing He wants with His creation. So, instead of everything going haywire when the “sun and the moon stood still,” God held it all together, no major cataclysmic effects of this happened.

So, if the Lord can hold the complexities of the earth together, don’t you think He can hold the complexities of your life together? Its no big deal for Him!

I thought back to when Greg first got word that the Army wanted him back. We had so many unanswered questions which was not unusual for the Army. The thing is, we used to be accustomed to uncertainty when we were still in the Army. But, over the years, Greg and I were blessed with a certain amount of simplicity in our life. Well, God threw a wrench in that and our life was almost up in chaos-not unlike Joshua’s sun standing still! Over time, the Lord spoke to our hearts and ministered to our need for answers. Things fell into place and we are doing just great during this deployment. It took faith on our part to tell that chaos to “stand still” and we believed God would hold us all together during the potential turbulence!

I challenge you to take up bold faith like Joshua and believe that God’s got you covered.