The Jerichos of Our Lives

There seems to be a bit of a theme in my Bible study these days.  Today I was in the book of Joshua and this verse really struck me...

Joshua 6:10
Now Joshua had commanded the people, saying, “You shall not shout or make any noise with your voice, nor shall a word proceed out of your mouth, until the day I say to you, ‘Shout!’ Then you shall shout.”

Yesterday I talked about the Israelites and how they were afraid and how they probably had all these feelings of being abandoned when Moses led them out into the desert.  I talked about how they must have felt as they watched the Egyptians gaining on them.  And I talked about how they just needed to be still and allow the Lord to fight for them.

Today as I read I found the theme continued as the battle of Jericho came to a head.  There they were, needing to take this city, and the instructions given to them were to walk around it.  To walk - think about that.  And on top of it they were told to be silent.  No talking, no laughter, no jeers towards the enemy.  No singing, no chanting, no cries for help, no anything - they were to be silent, completely silent until the moment when they were told, on the seventh day of walking, that they could shout - and then the walls would come down.

It seemed absurd!

I'm certain that many of them thought Joshua was off his rocker!

But remaining silent and walking is exactly what they did and what happened?

God was faithful.

And it occurs to me that in their silence they were still.  They waited on the Lord.

Just as when coming out of Egypt they had to wait on the Lord.

In our faith, just as the Israelites did, we too must wait on the Lord.

It is so easy to get caught up in life and want to take charge and control situations ourselves.  I think it's human nature to want to control things - fleshly nature - thus a sinful nature.  Control leads to sin.  God doesn't want us to control it all.  He wants us to be still, wait on Him, trust in Him, walk with Him, and when we do that we can see Him work.

If we are always in charge, if we don't allow God to move because we work so hard to take over ourselves, then how can the Jerichos of our lives be brought down?