Thursday, October 30, 2008

Thursday's devotion Mind Blowing

Read Joshua 11
More battles...... A few things stood out to me. Hazor was a king who rounded up other kings and their people to fight Israel. Hazor means "intelligent". Human intelligence is a huge enemy to God's ways because his ways are higher than ours. Ro. 8:7 says that the carnal mind is always hostile toward God. It never did obey God's laws and it never will. God told Joshua to utterly kill all of them with the edge of the sword, even their horses. I quess that is what we have to do with our own reasoning. Kill it with the sword God has given us -- the Bible. God wants to put our hope totally in Him, no matter what things look like on the surface. The Word of God is a 2-edged sword that divides soul and spirit, bone and marrow, and thoughts and intentions. It will renew your mind and give you the mind of Jesus.
Joshua did all that God told him to do. Vs. 19 says that there was not a city that made peace with them except for the Hivites that had tricked them into making a covenant with them. The next verse said that God hardened the hearts of their enemies so that when they attacked them they would be defeated. James tells us in the NT that trials come to make us strong. God sends trials our way so that we can get mad enough to fight the enemy that is dwelling in our land and kick him out. Trials act as a mirror into our soul. You never know what is in a bottle until you turn it upside down and squeeze it. That is what God does to us. He turns our worlds upside down and puts the squeeze on us. Whatever we have fed on will come out. If you feed on the Word, it will come out of your mouth and save you.
Joshua was relentless. He went after the strongholds in the mountains. They are more strategically located so that they can see the enemy approaching and be ready for it. But Joshua had God on his side. It doesn't matter if you are battling something that has been in your family for a long time and has become a "high place"; God can defeat it through you.
The last verse says, "And the land rested from war." AHHHHH! Wouldn't you like to enter into God's rest? We can, after we have taken our land.
Lord, show us the enemies in our land and show us how to use our sword, the Word of God, to defeat every enemy. Thank you Jesus.

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