To Restart Requires Taking a First Step...

Yesterday we looked at a story in the Bible found in the book of Joshua where God commanded the Jewish people to cross the Jordan River and enter into the Promised Land. And God’s command and His plan seem simple enough: all they needed to do was follow the priests as they stepped into the Jordan River, and God would part the Jordan River so that they could cross on dry land. While that seems relatively simple; I mean obviously it would be a miracle for God to part the Jordan, but all they had to do was follow the priests after they waded into the Jordan. I mean that does not seem like too much to ask, does it?

But to really understand what God was expecting of the Jewish people, we first need one additional piece of information, which is provided as the story continues in Joshua 3:14-15:

So when the people set out from their tents to cross the Jordan with the priests carrying the ark of the covenant before the people, and when those who carried the ark came into the Jordan, and the feet of the priests carrying the ark were dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of harvest),

For the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of the harvest. The Jordan River, as it always was during the harvest, which occurred during the months of March and April on our calendars. During the spring, the melting snow from the surrounding mountains would turn the Jordan River into a swollen and raging river that overflowed its banks.

Now picture yourself as a member of the Jewish nation. As we saw earlier, you have been camped next to the Jordan for three days watching and listening to the Jordan River at flood stage. And after three days your leader comes to you and says, pack up all of your belongings because we are going to cross the Jordan. We are going to restart our lives now. But instead of parting the water beforehand, like the stories of Moses and the Red Sea that you heard growing up, you need to start wading into the river first.

How would you feel about the idea of wading into that river? With your wife; and your kids; and your possessions. Or imagine being one of the priests, who would be carrying the Ark of the Covenant. “So let me get this straight, you want me to carry the Ark where God’s presence dwells; the ark that carries the Ten Commandments into that river, without dropping or touching it”? Would you be excited about that prospect? Would you do that? You like the Jewish people, would be thinking “I can’t get across this river; it would take a miracle”. But to restart your life, you need to step into that river.

Maybe I have just described what the concept of restarting your life feels like to you. Maybe the whole prospect of restarting your life seems like a river at flood stage that you have to cross. Maybe for you to restart your life, it feels like there is a flooded river of fear and doubt that must be crossed. Just like the Jewish people at the Jordan River, the very idea of restarting our lives can often place us in front of what seems to be an insurmountable obstacle. Like a river at flood stage; like a deluge of doubt; like a flood of fear. Yet for the Jewish people, to restart their lives in a way that would move them to a place where they would be living in the relationship with God and one another that they were created and called us to be, they would have to take the first step.

And the timeless principle that this story reveals for us is that to restart requires taking a first step. Restarting our lives requires taking a first step towards how God has called us to live and to where God is calling us to be. Restarting our lives requires that we take a first step of courageous trust to do the right thing even when it is not the easy thing. Just as God was calling the Jewish people to demonstrate their courage and their trust in God by taking that first step into the Jordan, to restart our lives requires that we demonstrate our courage and trust in God by taking that first step towards the life that God calls us to live.

We see how God responded to the Jewish people’s first step as the story concludes, beginning again in verse 15:

and when those who carried the ark came into the Jordan, and the feet of the priests carrying the ark were dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks all the days of harvest), the waters which were flowing down from above stood and rose up in one heap, a great distance away at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan; and those which were flowing down toward the sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. So the people crossed opposite Jericho. And the priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firm on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed on dry ground, until all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan.

God responded to the Jewish people taking that first step to do what they were supposed to do by doing what only He could do. As soon as the priests took that first step and stood in the Jordan River, God stopped the flow of the water that was coming down the Jordan River at a town called Adam so that it stood up in one heap. So the water just began to stack up on top of itself at Adam. The town of Adam was 19 miles upstream from where the Jewish people crossed the Jordan. In addition, the water that would have normally flowed into the Jordan River was prevented from doing so by God. The priests would be standing in the middle of the now dry riverbed of the Jordan River as over 600,000 men crossed to the other side. If you include women and children, most scholars believe that between 1.5 and 2 million people would have crossed the Jordan River as the water stacked up some 19 miles away. Now that is something that only the supernatural activity of God could accomplish.

But God’s supernatural activity began after He invited the Jewish people to take that first step. For the Jewish people to restart their lives, they needed to take that first step that demonstrated their courage and confident trust in the reality that God could do only what God could do. And is the same way today, God invites us to take that first step of courage and confident trust so that God can do what only God can do in our effort to restart our lives. Because the reality is that to restart requires taking a first step.

So what is keeping you from taking that first step to restart your life? What obstacle, what river at flood stage do you need to take that first step into so that God would do what only He can do?