Joshua 4: 4-7
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.
One of my favorite passages in the bible is in Joshua Chapter 4. As the Israelites crossed Jordan, their new leader Joshua commanded something unusual for them to do. He commanded the twelve tribes to collect twelve stones as memorial pieces of this marvelous event for the nation of Israel forever.
Whenever we come across life-threatening trials (similar to that of a flooding Jordan in front of the Israelites) in our lives, we need to understand that God allows such trials to prove His marvelous faithfulness and awesome control that He has over anything and everything in our lives. When passing through such trials, we need to learn to see far beyond those trials and plan how we can later testify about God’s greatness and faithfulness during such a time to others. Such trials are nothing but opportunities for us to build everlasting memorials about God’s faithfulness and awesome control over our lives.
Such memorials can
(i) build our confidence in Him when we face even larger trials later in our lives
(ii) minimize any kind of trial ahead of us and maximize our focus on God’s awesome power and His faithfulness in our lives and
(iii) help others around us see, wonder and believe in this awesome God.
Here is another example from the bible where another great man of God won a marvelous victory against a giant who was terrorizing an entire nation.
I Samuel 17: 32-37
32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."
33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth."
34 But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you."
When David saw Goliath, he went to Saul and said that he would go against this giant and bring him down. Saul and his security council were not really convinced of this young man’s idea. But then David told them about how God had helped him protect his father’s sheep from wild beasts in the past. It is in fact interesting to see the confident David minimizing Goliath as similar to one of those wild beasts while the whole nation of Israel was trembling at the very sight of Goliath. David had built up such an awesome and accurate memorial of God’s faithfulness and power in his life that the idea of Goliath being anything significant sounded so trivial to him.
In our fast paced world, do we pause and try to remember the great things that God has done in our lives? In this age of wired (better said wireless!!!!) communication, we are rapidly getting used to store all the needed information for our professional world, in wireless gadgets or in online servers that we don’t have to remember them any more. We are also getting used to backing up the data that we collect to avoid any loss of data due to accidental deletions or hardware crashes.
But when was the last time that we paused to record the data of God’s greatness and His faithfulness in our lives even as He brought us out of a nasty problem which we thought would sink us down?
Also, when we think of our various painful struggles in the past, do we complain about them or do we praise God for leading us out of those trials with His awesome power? What is our first thought about our nasty problems in the past? Are we able to look back and praise God for His mercies and grace? Or are we grumbling against Him with bitterness for leading us through such a rough terrain?
We need to understand that memory is a God given gift to mankind. But human memory often keeps record of all the wrong things for a longer time leading to scars of bitterness. We as human beings tend to often remember the wrong or tragic things that happen to us for a long time while often forgetting God’s faithfulness and grace for us to overcome those painful moments.
Probably, this is where memorials play an important role in human life. If we think about memorials, it will be interesting to note that most memorials in history throughout the world are raised by people to always remind us of either some monumental achievement of someone as a person or the resilience of a community of people during a tragic time in history. Similarly, personal memorials regarding God’s goodness in our own lives during tough times can help us keep a better record of God’s faithfulness and grace in our lives. Such memorials also help us to minimize any major trial that we may have to face in future by helping us to focus on Him and Him alone. Beyond all these, it may be that God leads us successfully through such painful trials and struggles in our own lives so that we can later graciously help with confidence people around us who may go through a similar path. Therefore the next time we face some major trial or threat in our own lives, let us remember to focus on recording accurately God’s greatness and faithfulness through it. And while we are yet recording His perfect guidance, we may find ourselves already out of the problem.
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.
One of my favorite passages in the bible is in Joshua Chapter 4. As the Israelites crossed Jordan, their new leader Joshua commanded something unusual for them to do. He commanded the twelve tribes to collect twelve stones as memorial pieces of this marvelous event for the nation of Israel forever.
Whenever we come across life-threatening trials (similar to that of a flooding Jordan in front of the Israelites) in our lives, we need to understand that God allows such trials to prove His marvelous faithfulness and awesome control that He has over anything and everything in our lives. When passing through such trials, we need to learn to see far beyond those trials and plan how we can later testify about God’s greatness and faithfulness during such a time to others. Such trials are nothing but opportunities for us to build everlasting memorials about God’s faithfulness and awesome control over our lives.
Such memorials can
(i) build our confidence in Him when we face even larger trials later in our lives
(ii) minimize any kind of trial ahead of us and maximize our focus on God’s awesome power and His faithfulness in our lives and
(iii) help others around us see, wonder and believe in this awesome God.
Here is another example from the bible where another great man of God won a marvelous victory against a giant who was terrorizing an entire nation.
I Samuel 17: 32-37
32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."
33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth."
34 But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you."
When David saw Goliath, he went to Saul and said that he would go against this giant and bring him down. Saul and his security council were not really convinced of this young man’s idea. But then David told them about how God had helped him protect his father’s sheep from wild beasts in the past. It is in fact interesting to see the confident David minimizing Goliath as similar to one of those wild beasts while the whole nation of Israel was trembling at the very sight of Goliath. David had built up such an awesome and accurate memorial of God’s faithfulness and power in his life that the idea of Goliath being anything significant sounded so trivial to him.
In our fast paced world, do we pause and try to remember the great things that God has done in our lives? In this age of wired (better said wireless!!!!) communication, we are rapidly getting used to store all the needed information for our professional world, in wireless gadgets or in online servers that we don’t have to remember them any more. We are also getting used to backing up the data that we collect to avoid any loss of data due to accidental deletions or hardware crashes.
But when was the last time that we paused to record the data of God’s greatness and His faithfulness in our lives even as He brought us out of a nasty problem which we thought would sink us down?
Also, when we think of our various painful struggles in the past, do we complain about them or do we praise God for leading us out of those trials with His awesome power? What is our first thought about our nasty problems in the past? Are we able to look back and praise God for His mercies and grace? Or are we grumbling against Him with bitterness for leading us through such a rough terrain?
We need to understand that memory is a God given gift to mankind. But human memory often keeps record of all the wrong things for a longer time leading to scars of bitterness. We as human beings tend to often remember the wrong or tragic things that happen to us for a long time while often forgetting God’s faithfulness and grace for us to overcome those painful moments.
Probably, this is where memorials play an important role in human life. If we think about memorials, it will be interesting to note that most memorials in history throughout the world are raised by people to always remind us of either some monumental achievement of someone as a person or the resilience of a community of people during a tragic time in history. Similarly, personal memorials regarding God’s goodness in our own lives during tough times can help us keep a better record of God’s faithfulness and grace in our lives. Such memorials also help us to minimize any major trial that we may have to face in future by helping us to focus on Him and Him alone. Beyond all these, it may be that God leads us successfully through such painful trials and struggles in our own lives so that we can later graciously help with confidence people around us who may go through a similar path. Therefore the next time we face some major trial or threat in our own lives, let us remember to focus on recording accurately God’s greatness and faithfulness through it. And while we are yet recording His perfect guidance, we may find ourselves already out of the problem.
