THE JOURNEY
Step by step.
Left. Right. Left.
One foot in front of the other.
God is faithful to bring us through. So faithful. So good.
He knows the beginning from the end and just what we need.
Life is a journey, and every moment counts. When we miss what God is doing today we come up short tomorrow. When we despise our present, we forfeit our promise. So many times, in our haste to wake up in the new, we fail to collect the things we will need to eventually keep us there. What we need for the next stage in the journey is what God is doing right now.
Don’t despise your past.
Don’t wish your way out of obscurity.
Don’t despise the place of small beginnings.
Learn the skills of gratitude for the good and forgiveness for the bad.
Your journey is what makes you YOU! Genuine and unique. Nothing is ever a waste or a mistake in the Hand of God.
“Not all those who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Albert Einstein
Truly, everything is a miracle.
Everything.
The journey of every Jesus-follower passes through four locations.
He leads, we follow. He invites, we respond. He draws, we enter. He reveals, we are transformed.
Elijah took a pilgrimage on his last day on earth (2 Kings 2:1-15). With a young protégé on his heels, Elijah shows us the four transitions we pass through cyclically in our lives.
In this passage of Scripture, we find delineated for us four stages in a particular journey; it started at Gilgal, proceeded onward to Bethel, went next to Jericho, and finally crossed over the Jordan River.
GILGAL – RECOMMITMENT
THE PLACE WHERE FAITH BEGINS
It was a symbolic place of the Hebrew people. Where they came back to their God and made covenant with Him. A reminder, a recommitment, a renewal. I’ve found that you never actually graduate from this place. There are times when He’ll bring you back again. To remember and recommit.
For me it was coming back to God as a university student. Separating myself from the world again, after living a life of double standards.
You wont find God's plan for your life in the land of compromise.
If you want all God’s got, you must give Him all you are.
When my world started to fall a part God delivered me and brought me to Gilgal. I came to a place of recommitment – a place of dealing with my flesh and cutting certain things away from my life.
BETHEL – RELATIONSHIP
LIVING IN CONTINUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
Bethel was the place Abraham built an altar. God conversed with Abraham at that altar. He made promises to Abraham’s descendants and made covenants to His faithfulness.
Jacob also had a revelation of the House of God – Bethel – and made a stone memorial there. God spoke with Jacob there – God spoke into Jacob’s future in Bethel.
Bethel is a place of relationship. It is a place where we meet with God. Bethel is where the presence of God is.
I have been healed, loosed and promised a future in my Bethel. The consequences of my past were dealt with in Bethel. I have sensed the Presence of God there and I am addicted to Bethel.
It’s beautiful there.
We can have private Bethel moments and glorious corporate Bethel moments – when the Church comes together and miracles take place.
I take personal responsibility for this place. It’s where I commune with God, talk with Him. It’s where I consecrate, dedicate, devote myself to Him.
We see Him, worship Him, hear Him, experience Him at Bethel.
It’s where He speaks to us, makes promises with us.
JERICHO – BREAKTHROUGH
PLACE OF WARFARE & SUBMISSION
Jericho was the place of insurmountable odds. Jericho was the impossible. Jericho was beyond reach. Jericho was a mockery. Jericho was high and exalting itself.
It was also a place of silent and humiliating submission to the plans of God, where God’s people willingly followed a ridiculous plan and carried out the most unorthodox method of warfare in history.
Gilgal may have been the first place that Israel came to when they entered the Promised Land. But Jericho was the first battle that they had to have in the Promised Land itself.
Jericho IS ultimately the place of Supernatural breakthrough.
Learn to approach it with faith not fear.
In your journey you’ll visit Gilgal where you’ll make a commitment to God.
You’ll steal away to Bethel often where you and your Beloved God will commune and fellowship.
You’ll also come to a place of insurmountable difficulty.
Every Jesus-follower will face the fortified odds of a promise that seems impossible.
Every believer will have the opportunity to face it God’s way.
Every Christian will visit Jericho.
JORDAN – CHANGE
A PLACE OF CROSSING OVER
The Jordan River served as a boundary for the tribes. The crossing of the Jordan from east to west was symbolic of the arrival of he Hebrews in the Promised Land. It was s significant place of reckoning.
Almost 600 years before Elijah stood there, God had commanded Joshua to take 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan and set them up as a memorial so that no one would forget that God had parted the River for the people to cross.
Forty years before that, God had done a similar thing parting the Red Sea as dry land for the Israelites to cross through under hot pursuit by their captors.
Here’s the key though my friend,
Crossing the Red Sea was an event forced by circumstance.
Crossing the river Jordan, however, was a voluntary and self-chosen action.
At the Red Sea they had no option. They either charged on through the guts of an ocean or they were dead.
At the Jordan River there was no one chasing them, only a Promise luring them forward. They were not under threat. They could make do and get by this side of the Jordan. They could forfeit the promise and stay. They could resign and camp. They didn’t have to cross.
But they did. They chose to change.
Jordan is the place of transformation and change.
Some people today refuse to cross the river Jordan, they do not seek after the power of resurrection.
Our failure to choose is still a choice.
Our inaction is still a deliberate action.
We either choose to choose the Will of God, and allow the transformational process to completely alter us.
Or we choose not to choose.
We stay.
The same.
Thankfully Elijah and his ancestors before him, chose to walk through the transformational process at the Jordan.
Thankfully they show us the power of a God who is always victorious and characteristically trustworthy.
As we journey the transitions He leads us through we are confident in this one thing:
"He who began a good work in you is faithful to bring it to completion." Philippians 1:6
