To Restart Requires Faith...

Yesterday, we looked at a decision that a woman named Rahab had to make to exercise and demonstrate faith. Rahabe had to decide to place her confident trust in the fact that two spies from the Jewish people, who were God’s representatives, would keep their promise to her, in spite of the label that she wore and the life that she had lived.

But not only did Rahab have to decide to exercise confident trust that these men would keep their word to spare her and her family’s life; the spies also had a decision to make, as the story continues in Joshua 2:15:

Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the city wall, so that she was living on the wall. She said to them, "Go to the hill country, so that the pursuers will not happen upon you, and hide yourselves there for three days until the pursuers return. Then afterward you may go on your way."

Rahab advises the spies to go the opposite direction of the Jordan River to the hill country that was approximately one mile west of the city. This hill country was filled with caves that were well suited for hiding. So the spies had a decision to make. The spies had to decide whether or not they were going to place their confident trust in Rahab.

So place yourself in the spies’ shoes. Would you have responded the same way? Would you place your confident trust in Rahab? Would you place your lives in the hands of a prostitute? A prostitute who was part of a wicked culture that was the enemy that God has commanded you to destroy? A prostitute who made her living manipulating men to go to bed with her for money? Are you going to take her advice on how to escape from the soldier’s of Jericho? I mean should could just as easily turn around and tell them exactly where they were going to hide for three days. We see the spies’ decision in the verses that follow:

The men said to her, "We shall be free from this oath to you which you have made us swear, unless, when we come into the land, you tie this cord of scarlet thread in the window through which you let us down, and gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all your father's household. "It shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be free; but anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him. "But if you tell this business of ours, then we shall be free from the oath which you have made us swear." She said, "According to your words, so be it." So she sent them away, and they departed; and she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

You see, both Rahab and the two spies faced the same dilemma, but from different perspectives. For Rahab, she recognized that she needed to restart her life that had been running off the rails. But to restart her life, she needed to place her faith in two spies to keep their word. For the two spies, they recognized that to complete their mission to obtain information so that they Jewish people could restart their lives, they would need to place their faith in a prostitute to keep her word.

In both cases, to restart required the same timeless principle. And that timeless principle is that to restart requires faith. Rahab had to place her faith in the character and word of two spies that represented God. The spies had to place their faith in the evidence God’s activity in a life that was being drawn to God and transformed by God. And in the same way today, we see that to restart requires faith. Just like Rahab and the two spies, to restart, we must place our faith; we must place our confident trust in the right object.

Restarting requires that we place our confident trust in the nature and character of God. And restarting requires that we place our confident trust in His timeless word that is found in the Bible. We see the results of the spies faith revealed for us as the story concludes:

They departed and came to the hill country, and remained there for three days until the pursuers returned. Now the pursuers had sought them all along the road, but had not found them. Then the two men returned and came down from the hill country and crossed over and came to Joshua the son of Nun, and they related to him all that had happened to them. They said to Joshua, "Surely the LORD has given all the land into our hands; moreover, all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before us."

The spies responded to Rahab by faithfully following her advice. The spies traveled in the opposite direction of the Jordan and stayed three days hidden in the hills. And the spies’ faith was rewarded by a safe return to the Jewish people across the Jordan. And the spies were able to deliver two incredibly important pieces of information.

First, the spies were able to express their faith in God’s promise to give the Jewish people the Promised Land as a result of the evidence of God’s activity in the life of a prostitute who did what seemed to be the unthinkable. Second, they were able to express that the residents of Jericho were already defeated; their moral was at rock bottom as a result of God’s activity in the lives of the Jewish people.

Because the timeless reality is that to restart requires faith. To restart requires placing our confident trust in the nature and character of God and the truth of His word.

So where do you need to exercise faith when it comes to restarting your life? And where are you placing your faith? What or who is the object that you place your confident trust in?