"You shall march around the city, all [you] men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days. "And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. "It shall come to pass, when they make a long [blast] with the ram's horn, [and] when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up every man straight before him."
- Joshua 6:3-5
This historical account of God's plan for the walls of Jericho to come down is in my file of "plans that don't make sense but we obey in faith" category, for God will give us directions at times that from a wordly perspective, don't sound reasonable. Imagine being Joshua and relaying this to the camp: "okay guys, here's the grand plan God has given us to conquer Jericho....".
But that thought is not what I want to focus on in this brief post but another thought that came to me while listening to the song "Every Giant Will Fall" by Rend Collective and it is this: how is your faith when you are obeying and nothing is happening?
We often struggle when we don't see results and think "but I'm doing all the Lord has asked of me so maybe there is something wrong with me or my faith, etc."
For these guys, they didn't just march around a city (however long that might have taken) once or twice or three times or four times....but 13 times in total. They had directions that it wouldn't be until the 7th time on the 7th day after shouting that the walls would come down, but from a human perspective, do you think they wondered and wrestled with whether it would really work or maybe hoped that by the 3rd day they would see some kind of results?
We pray for something once or twice or three times, etc. and start to wonder why God isn't answering, why we aren't seeing results, when maybe it isn't us but God's plan to unfold. Why did they have to march 13 times, for surely God could have done it after the first walk around - but God has His reasons and part of those were to grow them in faith among others.
So keep walking, keep praying, keep going - you might think nothing is happening because we live in a results oriented culture and want to give up too soon but results are not our job, they are God's, so for us we keep walking, praying, serving, going even when we think nothing is happening.
If we give up too soon, we'll miss when the walls finally come down.
