She is thirty four and she has been sitting on this for a year and a half, and the obstacle is not what anybody would guess.
It is not money, though money is a factor. It is not fear of failure exactly, though she has run that argument with herself many times.
It is that she does not know a single person who has done anything like it.
Not one. Not in her family, where nobody has ever left the county for work. Not among her friends, who are teachers and nurses and one accountant. Not in her church, where the people who do unusual things are a category she has always watched from a distance and assumed something specific was true of them that is not true of her.
So she has no picture. She has an instruction she believes came from God, and no image anywhere in her life of a person like her doing it, and the absence of the image has been more paralysing than any of the practical problems.
Here is the sentence she has never said out loud.
She thinks that if this were really from God, she would have been given somebody to copy.
Read the reason they were given
There is an instruction at the Jordan, and the reason attached to it is the part almost nobody quotes.
Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: come not near unto it, that ye may know the way by which ye must go: for ye have not passed this way heretofore.Joshua 3:4
For ye have not passed this way heretofore.
That is the reason given. Not although they had not passed this way. For. Because. The unfamiliarity of the road is stated as the reason for the arrangement rather than as an objection to it.
And look at what the arrangement is. A gap, deliberately kept, so that everybody could see the ark going in front. The whole design assumes nobody knows where they are going. It is built for people without a precedent, because that is exactly what they were.
Your lack of a precedent is written into the instruction rather than an argument against it, and Joshua 3:4 gives it as the reason. That is what the word actually states, not a reading I am stretching, and the Holy Spirit is the One who goes ahead of a woman with nobody to copy.
Nobody had done it before them either
Now the plain thing, and it is a little bracing.
Every person you would have wanted to copy was, at some point, a person with nobody to copy. That is not a slogan. It is arithmetic. The chain has to start somewhere and the first link never has a model, and there is no generation in which everybody is following.
And your reading of the absence is upside down. You've taken nobody I know has done this as evidence that it is not for you, when in your family and your circle it is exactly what you would expect to see if it were for you and you went first.
That is not a promise that you are right about the instruction. It is the removal of one argument that was never a real argument.
And nothing about being the first has ever meant you misheard. Scripture has a whole nation crossing a river none of them had crossed, with the reason written down, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting for somebody in your family to go first.
The first visible step
Here is the practical piece, and it is deliberately visible.
Take the first step that other people can see.
Not the private preparation. You've done eighteen months of private preparation, and private preparation is where a thing goes to be safe. The first step somebody else could notice: the application, the conversation, the email, the sum of money moved from one account to another.
Visible matters because invisible steps can be walked back without anybody knowing, including you, and this thing has been walked back quietly a dozen times.
And I am not telling you the instruction was certainly from God. That is not mine to tell you, and inventing that on your behalf would be the worst thing I could do here. What I can tell you is that you've been treating one particular argument as decisive, and it is not an argument at all.
You are able to take a visible step this week, and having no model was never the disqualification. Joshua 3:4 gives the unfamiliar road as the reason for the arrangement rather than as an obstacle, and the Holy Spirit is the One who steadies a woman going first.
So here is the turn, and it is this week, at the kitchen table.
Go first.
Not because being first is romantic. It is not, and it is lonely, and the people who love you will be worried rather than inspired, and you should expect that and not read it as a verdict.
Go because you have been waiting eighteen months for a permission that was never going to arrive in the form you were looking for, and because the absence you have been treating as a closed door is written into the passage as the reason the ark went in front.
You are able to move without a model, and the road being unfamiliar was never the objection. Joshua 3:4 gives ye have not passed this way as the reason itself, and the Holy Spirit is going ahead of a woman with nobody to copy.
Now the honest half. Nothing here promises it works, and going first sometimes means being the one who finds out it does not, and that is a real risk and I am not going to dress it up. However He answers, the outcome is His and not ours to sell, and eighteen months of hesitation are never evidence against you. What is settled is that having no precedent was never the argument you thought it was.
Eighteen months and nobody to copy. Go and take the visible one.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud at the table. The standing to speak them is yours because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the authority is not your own: it is His, delegated and carried in His Name, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes the word live in an ordinary woman's mouth. However He answers, and however far this goes, the outcome is His, and eighteen months of waiting are never evidence against you.
- Requirement that somebody must have done this before me, you are a precedent and God never asked for one. Joshua 3:4 gives ye have not passed this way heretofore as the reason for the arrangement rather than an objection to it. You are not caution, and you are a picture I could not find.
- Reading that says an absence of models means I misheard, get out in the name of Jesus. You have held a good woman still for eighteen months over an argument that is not an argument, and God has never once required anybody's family to go first. Every person worth copying began with nobody to copy.
- Lord, You told them the way was unfamiliar and You put the ark out in front where everybody could see it. Scripture writes the not knowing into the instruction rather than against it, and the Holy Spirit is going ahead of me this week. I am taking the visible step, and I am naming the day tonight.
Joshua 3:4
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