“And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus
upon thy face?”
Joshua 7:10
In the passage of Joshua 7:1-10,
we read of the defeat of Israel
by Ai. Israel had sinned against the
Lord. Achan had taken something that the
Lord had cursed, and God was angry.
Sometimes when we have troubles and trials, it’s because we’ve brought
them upon ourselves. And Joshua, Israel’s
leader became absolutely distraught. He
was at ground level. He felt overwhelmed
by defeat. He began to say things that
later he perhaps wished he hadn’t said: “And Joshua said, Alas, O Lord God, wherefore hast thou at
all brought this people over Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the
Amorites, to destroy us? would to God we had been content, and dwelt on the
other side Jordan!”
(V 7). And he “fell
to the earth upon his face.” (V. 6)
Several years ago, I’ll have to
admit, I was having a Joshua day. I felt
absolutely overwhelmed by responsibilities, deadlines, and commitments. I felt as if I were having a panic
attack. And the harder I worked, the
stronger I felt the sensation of drowning.
Just then, to add to my misery,
my phone rang, and the voice at the other end asked me for a favor, to which I
complied.
I went into my bedroom and locked
the door. I walked into my bathroom,
locked the door behind me, and lay down on my bathroom floor, and I said, “God,
this is as low as I can get. I can’t get
any lower. You’ve got to help me.” Then I said to myself, “Myself, GET UP!” Then I reached up on the side of the wash
basin, and literally pulled myself up to a standing position, and I’ve been
going ever since. Now I know and you
know Who really told me to get up, don’t we.
If you have never come to the
place in your life where all seems in vain…bills are piling in maybe; one baby
gets over diarrhea, and the next one starts vomiting; you tackle your kitchen
and get it cleaned, only to find that the baby has poured Downy all over your
laundry room floor. If you’ve never felt
like lying down on the bathroom floor like I did that morning, your day is
coming. It’s on the way. What are you going to do?
You have several options:
- You can stay in the bathroom and hide where no one
can find you. Did you know you set
the atmosphere for your home? What would
my grandson have done if he had found his Mimi lying on the bathroom
floor? He’d have told my daughter. She in turn would have called her
husband, who would have immediately come home from his work two hours
away. Or maybe he would have called
my son who lives in my town, who in turn would have left his pastoral
duties to tend to his aging mother who was having a nervous breakdown on
the bathroom floor. What do you
think the Israelites were doing or thinking when they saw their leader in
despair? Joshua was only human, but
somehow we expect our leaders to have it altogether, and so do your
children and grandchildren…and so does the Lord. Sometimes I think we underestimate the
Lord. We don’t avail ourselves of
His strength. “Well, no wonder I’m on
the bathroom floor…look at all I’m going through.” No matter what you’re going through, the
Lord will go with you, so if you can’t pull yourself up, then ask Him to
do it for you.
2. You
can scrub the bathroom floor while you’re down there. Did you know when you despair, the worst part
about being down is that you’re not up?
You’re not where you’re supposed to be.
What on earth made me think I could help the situation by lying on the
bathroom floor? God didn’t want me to
scrub the bathroom floor. He wanted me
to tackle the tasks that were overwhelming me… with His strength. Sometimes we try to do things in our own
strength. And when our strength fails,
we fall apart. We’re proud, aren’t we? We want to think we can do it all…we’ve got
it altogether. In Isaiah 40:28-31, the Bible says: “ Hast thou not known? hast
thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?
there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to
the faint; and to them that have no
might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be
weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and
they shall walk, and not faint.” I can see a miracle in verse 29: to them that have no might he increaseth strength. How much strength does the person have in that
verse? None. What does
God say that He would do with the strength that we don’t have? He said He would
increase it. One of the definitions of the word “increase” is “to multiply.” He
would multiply it. Unless the Math rules have changed, 0 times 0 equals 0. The
miracle here is that when you have absolutely no strength left, GET UP! God
will work a miracle, and He will multiply that 0, and give you strength that
you don’t have. God had things in control, even though Joshua didn’t. While I was on the bathroom floor, things were
being neglected. The longer I lay there,
the farther behind I got in my work.
That in itself could be discouraging, except that God can use even those
times for our good. This devotional came from the time I spent on the bathroom
floor. Realize that God can take even
your bad times, and turn them into good.
One of the most wonderful things I’ve learned in the past few weeks is
just simply to BE WHERE God wants me to be.
And it certainly isn’t on the bathroom floor…unless He wants me to scrub
it.
- You can do like Joshua did: Joshua 8:3 says, “So Joshua arose,…” you can obey the Lord, reach up and take
His hand, and let Him put you back on your feet. I don’t know about your house, but the
cleanest place in my house is not my bathroom floor. In fact, it’s the dirtiest place in my
house, probably. When we get right
down to it, (no pun intended) do you know what causes us to despair, and grovel
in our anxieties? It’s plain ole,
common ordinary sin. What caused
the defeat of Israel,
and Ai’s victory? It was the sin of
Achan, and his taking the accursed thing.
There was sin in the camp, and God was punishing His people. He knew what He was doing. Defeat was part of the disciplining
program. Not only did He want the
sin to be confessed, He wanted the accursed thing out of the camp…and the
accused, also. GET UP, and confess
your sin, and get back where you belong.
It’s a sin to fall apart, as bad as I hate to admit it. It’s a sin
to lose control in the first place. Do you know why? When you have control
that means God doesn’t. Confess
your sin, and give the control back to Him Who should have it in the first
place. Remember:
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I
John 1:9
