BTJ Week Six: Trust and Obey

Being a former elementary school teacher, the first thing I do before any reading assignment is preview any questions I'm supposed to answer after reading a text. We taught our students to do that to help them be able to identify answers more easily in the text as they read. At any rate, it just helps me to get my thinking cap on.

But in light of the last couple of weeks I've had, my ability to focus on anything has been seriously undermined. First I was in an auto accident in which, thankfully, nobody was hurt. Two weeks later the issue is still unresolved, and as seemingly simple as it should be able to resolve, there is a whole undercurrent of nasty flowing here that started the second the lady stepped out of her car to survey the damage. Two weeks later the battle rages on with no resolution, and every time I think about the whole situation it just makes me upset all over again.

So I come home from being in the auto accident to open a piece of mail that informs us that our mortgage will be going up by a huge chunk of change monthly. After hours of phone calls and what amounts to investigative work on my end of things, we are still left with a huge bill that will probably end up being our responsibility due to the negligence and oversight of someone who was involved in the process of preparing the settlement paperwork from when we closed on our house last spring. Do we have any choice in the matter? I still don't know. Add a couple more points onto my blood pressure here, too.

Yet one more stick pulled out of the Jenga tower of my life came yesterday. Mixed in with a stack of junk mail from last month was a piece of paper with a bill in it from the Veteran's Administration asking for their overpayment from when I should have stopped receiving benefits after remarrying. To the tune of over $15,000. Yes, folks, you read that number correctly, and we are talking US dollars. Payable immediately. In one lump sum. Now I may have some hope here, but my local VA office is closed for three weeks in February (no explanation as to why), and by the time help is available I will have two weeks to either cough up the dough, find a creative solution, or have the VA attack my credit.

"Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God." -- Psalm 69:1-3

And now I'm supposed to focus on Scripture and questions?!? Actually, yes.

I'll admit now: these big burdens on me are only the tip of the iceberg; just the select few I chose to share. Trust me -- there's more where that came from. When I finally sat down, albeit late, to do my reading of Joshua 6, these questions just really did not jump off the page at me. Yes, I knew I needed to put my nose in the Word, but that was about as far as I could emotionally go. What I believe God showed me through this passage might not have related directly to the questions, but I got a lot out of the reading. So I'd just like to share a few points of how Joshua 6 related to where I am right now.

1) Joshua 6:10 -- "To the people Joshua gave this command: 'You shall not shout or let your voice be heard, nor shall you utter a word, until the day I tell you to shout, Then you shall shout.' "

What I learned: Timing here was everything. It was a matter of trust. The Israelites had a very prescriptive set of directions they had to follow, and I mean to the letter. If you know me very well, you know I am a real conversationalist. That's putting it nicely. I am a talker. I love to share ideas, have conversations with people, share my insights, seek those of others, and so on. I love to connect and relate with people. Can you imagine me, for one whole minute, having to restrain my mouth until the appointed time?!? A daunting task indeed. But what I took away from it was this: Timing for me is everything, too. Ecclesiastes 3:7b tells me that there is "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." Maybe right now I need to quit relating my tale of drama and woe, shut my mouth, and bare my heart to God and allow him to teach me through this experience. It is my time to silence my mouth and listen. God will let me know when it's time to step up and speak out; until then, I've done enough. In the case of the auto accident, this lady has been mean and nasty since Day One, and it sounds like not much has changed there. Rather than get wound up about it, I need to entrust it to God and wait for instruction. Exodus 14:14 tells me that, "The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still." (NRSV) The NKJV says to "hold your peace." Now, this doesn't mean that God is taking sides, or that just because I am a Christian that everything will turn out the way I think it should, but I need to take myself out of this equation for now, be humbled by it, and wait and listen. Pretty simple.

2) Joshua 6:16b-17a, 18 -- " 'Shout! For the LORD has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction. As for you keep away from the things devoted to destruction, so as not to covet and take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel an object for destruction, bringing trouble upon it.' "

Translated in my mind: OK, here are my EXACT instructions for you here. I have given you a victory in this circumstance, but there are some caveats to how you are to handle this. Do not step one toe over the line, because if you do, you will bring on your own consequences. You've been blessed and warned -- now go!

I may or may not experience what I believe would be successes or victories in any of these situations. But I do know that God's given me exact instructions on how to live my life, to desire that justice be done where everything is concerned, to be morally right and upstanding even if I'm at fault, and that to emerge from these trials knowing that I was obedient to that is the point of all this. It is really hard to trust in this situation, much less obey, but there really is no other way to handle any of this with a clear conscience and feel like right has really been done for all parties concerned.

Which leads me to the song I posted below. Don't know why, but TRUST and OBEY seemed to be two words that jumped out at me from Joshua 6. And wouldn't you know it? There's a great old hymn by the same name. I love this new version by Big Daddy Weave, but before I leave you now to enjoy the song, I want to share the lyrics to the third verse, which they did not include in their version of the song...

Not a burden we bear,
Not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay.
Not a grief or a loss,
Not a frown nor a cross,
But is blest if we trust and obey

Trust and obey,
For there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey.