Topic: Discipline
Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in. And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him. (Joshua 6:1-5 KJV)
In Joshua 6, we have a great historic event on how the people of Israel conquered the land of Jericho and possessed it. It was not them who possessed the land, but God. David said in I Samuel 17:46, “…the battle is the LORD’S…” So how does Joshua 6 could apply to our daily living?
We do have the wall of Jericho in our lives and need to take it down. It’s just not enough to pray a sinner prayer to conquer our sins and be reunited with Jesus Christ. By the way, when you’d repeat a sinner prayer through somebody’s words, it would not be a sincere prayer to God. We’d have to use our own words to repent our sins to Him and invite Him to our own life. There is no sinner prayer formula. It’s just between you and God.
The wall I’m talking is about our wills or our lusts that block away from having a personal relationship with God. We have been defeated by the ways of world that our nation turns itself to pagan nation. We need to break our walls down, so God could reunite with us and govern this nation. We need to break our walls down, so that parents can unite with their children and live together. We need to break our walls down to avoid God’s judgment. I don’t believe that terrorists didn’t decide to attack us on September 11th, 2001. It was a wakeup call from God. We had been astray from God that we lost to stay in connect with God. In other words, we putted Him in a box.
God doesn’t need to lock Himself in the box. Instead, we need to break our walls down and sit on His knees as little children. That’s it. We don’t need to make this complication as the sinner prayer formula. That is what Roman Catholic Church doing, such as the Rosary Prayer or the Lord’s Prayer. Pray a repetitive prayer doesn’t guarantee us to enter the Heaven. Only by establishing a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ guarantee us to get the eternal assurance to be with Him.
