Joshua 1:9 – Feeling Everything Along the Way

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

Joshua 1:9 (ESV)


Reflecting on this passage, I want to share some more recent personal experiences, and how I've felt growth lately.

I've been traveling a lot lately, to visit friends in Atlanta, friends in Athens, family in North Carolina, and for work in Florida. And normally when I'm busier, it's easier for me to stay in touch with and faithful to the Lord. But I'm realizing that when I get out of a routine, it makes it a lot more difficult to stay disciplined in general. That doesn't just apply to my walk with Christ, but in a more real sense, everything has to do with my walk with Christ. I like having plans (which is probably why I'm so impatient with God's timing), so I struggle to stay as firm with my values when I need to make up my plans as I go – i.e. traveling.

When I was visiting family though, I had an experience where I’d felt uncertain about plans that the Lord has for me, and I saw one of the best sunsets I had ever seen before. I felt like everything was going to be alright. That feeling doesn’t last forever, because almost nothing does, but it didn’t need to. All I needed was that one sign, to know that I’m not in control. That might be tough to hear, but it takes a weight off my shoulders.

Nothing really "got better" immediately after, but that's the beauty of it. I could get everything that I ever wanted, right when I felt like I needed it. But how could I explain God's mercy through that? What would He have really done for me in that life? We'd all be getting robbed of everything that this life has to offer. The struggle, the relief, the loneliness, the companionship, the awkwardness, the comfort - we get to feel it all. I realize that this sounds overly philosophical and unrealistic, but I think that's just because we take it for granted.

I may feel less than great a lot of the time, but I'm very thankful for the opportunity to experience the environment that the Creator of the universe has deliberately put me in.

Popular posts from this blog

Update !

Felt compelled to leave an update here, since I also want use this blog to keep record of what's going on in my life spiritually, and it's also obviously been a while since my last upload. What's ironic about the lack of posts on a devotional blog is that it isn't because I haven't seen the Lord working as much as I was - I've actually seen God working in my life and the lives of others around me more than ever! He's given me unbelievable opportunities, and He's made it clear just who they came from. I've been able to witness a lot of His work in the last 6 months or so, and it's no coincidence that I've never felt closer to Him. As I've rested deeper within Scripture and held it side-by-side with my experiences, I've seen brief glimpses of Him in others that I know well and in some that I don't, and He's drawn my attention to flaws within myself that I either didn't see before or that I didn't see the connectedness of...
Read more

Threads

There was clearly a huge gap in between posts for this, and like I said in an update, it really was just because God had been doing so much around me, including a lot in my Scripture life. Specifically, I had started a reading plan for the first time, going through the entire Bible, front to back. And while I was doing that, it made it difficult to devote time to writing these posts, too  –  not just because of time, but also because of what felt like some kind of "spiritual burnout." I was very intentional about going through that reading plan  –  highlighting passages and reflecting on each day's reading, so that once I got to the end of it, I hadn't just marked up my Bible, but I "marked up" my heart and mind to an extent, too. By the time I got through my reading for the day, it was difficult to put the same kind of energy and thought into my writing. It wasn't a sacrifice that I necessarily wanted to make, but when I tried to work on posts while I w...
Read more

People Pleasing

I've spent some time lately reading a book called Pleasing People by Lou Priolo. He writes about how our desire to please man manifests itself in our lives, and he offers Biblical solutions for it. I think it's an important read for anyone who struggles with any kind of social anxiety, or for anyone who falsely believes they're immune to it. So everybody. This might only end up being the first post of multiple on people-pleasing, because as I've gone through the book, I've discovered more perspectives of that whole pursuit since I started this post.  Regardless, the concept of valuing man's approval more than that of the Lord's is obviously all over the place in the New Testament. There was plenty of time between the final prophet of old and John the Baptist (and Christ) for corruption to enter the Church and harden the hearts and motivations of the God's people. Being a Pharisee was more of a status symbol than anything, and God had slowly been pushed o...
Read more