Formulas...

This is from Beth Moore's blog on Living Proof Ministries... it spoke volumes to me about how we try to reproduce a formula as to how God speaks and how we learn it one way and think we can predict Him in the next move... love the reassurance of how differently God spoke to our Fathers of the faith...

Joshua 6:4 –
“Have seven priests carry trumpets of rams’ horns in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times, with the priests blowing the trumpets.”



Perhaps it won’t surprise you that the word “march” makes regular appearances in this book of the Bible so, if you’re in the wilderness longing to cross that river of fear and enter a land of fruitfulness, you might venture a fresh look at it. Here’s what hit me about Joshua 6:4 –


Marching tends takes a heap longer than we expect and a different form than we might rationalize. Think how odd all that marching-around-in-circles must have been to some of those Israelites. On top of that, consider that God never instructed another group of people to take exactly that same approach again in the pages of Scripture. He told Abraham to do one thing. Moses, another. Joshua, another. David, still another. All were in keeping with His will and His character but the variance in prescribed acts of obedience reminds us that God is resistant to our relentless pursuit of formulas. God knows, if we could rationalize it, we’d institutionalize it. We’d have 2500 satellite locations of the “First Church of Seven Circles.”