Towards the end of the Israelites’ time in the desert, God chose Joshua to replace Moses as their leader. After Moses died, God said to Joshua “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.” Joshua 1:5.
In just a few days after that, the Israelites would cross the Jordan river and begin their fight to take the Promised Land. After more than forty years in the desert, the people were ready to lay claim to what God had promised. God was ready too. So, He took time to encourage Joshua and to assure him that He was going before them to clear the way for them.
God is still in the business of going before us today. No matter what your situation or circumstance may be, He is ahead of you. Like Joshua, He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will never fail you nor will He ever leave you on your own for the sake of anyone or anything else. You are His reason for being.
When He is ahead of us, we are His priority. The Israelites had spent four hundred years in bondage in Egypt. And though they didn’t change their location during that time, God was still ahead of them. Then they wandered for more than 40 years around the desert, yet still God was ahead of them. He never left them.
Sometimes I find myself in my own bondage or wandering around my desert. In those times, I often ask the Lord, “Where are you?” I guess I think sometimes that since I’m still in my challenge I must be alone. Waiting on the Lord can make you feel like you are alone. I had to learn that I am never alone. He is always ahead of me.
So, remember this. When you are in the middle of what challenges you the most, don’t panic or start to doubt where God may be. He is a God who keeps His promises to us. Jesus is always with us. He never leaves or forsakes us. He cannot fail. There is no one more important to Him than you are at the moment of your greatest need or in your greatest joy.
God positions Himself ahead of us because He knows the way out of our challenges is to push through them. He is ahead so that He makes the way for us to follow. Being ahead of us helps Him to position Himself to get our attention so we keep our eyes focused ahead and not around.
We look for God to deliver us from what ails us or what is bothering us, but God often chooses to fix our eyes on what keeps us from living healthy or free even in our sicknesses and bondage. God stirs the waters of our spirits not just our lives.
He gets our attention and tells us that it is time to stir up our faith and be cleansed of what our challenges will attack. He wants us to look for the waves He makes more than the waves that come at us by our own making.
Sometimes, He uses the mountain of a problem before us to get our attention and to remind us that He is ahead of us and that we can trust Him. No matter how high our challenges are, with Him ahead of us, we can always overcome.
Sometimes, when we are in a lions’ den, He may not kill the lions, but He will surely shut their mouths. He wants us to allow Him to show our adversary that as we believe strongly, He will lead us to live safely in some of the most trying circumstances.
Sometimes, when we are in a fiery furnace, He may not put out the fire, but he will use the fire to show others that He will walk with us no matter where are. He will not fail us in the hottest moments of our lives.
Sometimes, when there is a wide and deep sea blocking our path, He might not give us a boat. Instead, He will help us see that if we are patient, He will make for us a way through the deep waters.
Sometimes, He even uses a goliath to get our attention and to remind us that we must continue to serve Him when others would forsake Him to have the things the world offers us.
You can count on the Lord. He is with you. He is always ahead of you. If you seek Him, He will answer you. This why you should trust that He is ahead of you.
He stands at the top of your mountain. He protects you in the lion’s den. He is with you in the hot furnace, and He is the One stirring the waters of your spirit, so you don’t waste your life looking for man to make miraculous things for you.
God is always ahead of you to make known the riches of His glory on people like you and me who live lives that are of grace and mercy.
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