When trusting means waiting

What happens when we trust God only halfway?

In this teaching from the book of Joshua, we look at the consequences of obedience, disobedience, impatience, and trying to move ahead of God. From Jericho to Achan’s hidden sin to Israel’s defeat and eventual victory at Ai, we see a powerful reminder that our choices rarely affect only us—and that God calls His people to trust Him completely.

Sometimes the hardest part of obedience isn’t doing something difficult. It’s waiting when God says wait. It’s resisting the urge to take control, move ahead, or ask God to bless plans we never asked Him to lead in the first place.

This episode is an invitation to examine where we may be holding tightly to our own plans and ask a deeper question: Am I asking God to come alongside what I want, or am I willing to surrender my will and follow His?

God’s timing may stretch our patience, but His goodness is worth waiting for.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Right now we're in a flyover to after flyover left. And sometimes it doesn't always seem like we have to do it. Thanks for being here today, ladies. I was thinking a lot this morning. I added this little part because I was thinking about flyover states and how we live in one. You know, where this you know what that means. It means that most of the time they don't stop here. They're like, that doesn't even really exist, right? There's a whole Wyoming's not real campaign. I was thinking about flyover states and how they do get missed. And oftentimes you think, well, I wouldn't want to go there. I mean, Gillette's brown, it doesn't have very many trees. But if you met people from here, you would probably hear people say what we say, but the people are really great, or the skies are amazing. We have these beautiful sunrises and sunsets. They are amazing. They're worth seeing, right? Right now we're in a flyover chapter or flyover book. A lot of times in the Old Testament, these books get passed over, they get skimmed over, like because there's a lot of things in them that are kind of hard. Like here in Wyoming, it's rugged, it's dry, it's not like the easiest terrain to be a part of, right? We get real, real cold and we can get real hot. It's not always ideal. Joshua is one of those books that can be really hard to comprehend some of the things that God allows to happen or even calls for. And so it can be one of those flyover books. We kind of just want to skim on over that and just go right back to the gospels and let's go to the happy stuff. You know, this week we get some harder stuff. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much. That we do get to dive into some of the harder stuff. We get to know your character better, we get to learn about you, and we get to learn about it through the story of Joshua and Israel in this time. And we just thank you, Lord, that you have given us this, that we can study it, that we can come together and fellowship and discuss it. And I just pray for your words and not mine today. Amen. So last time we ended with the commander answering Joshua in that either-or question with a no answer. I loved it. I loved that. That was my favorite part. I think because that's kind of like how I want a mom sometimes, you know. Like, did you ask me an either-or question? And I'm going to give you a yes or no answer. That's really funny to me. And he says it basically it's like, I'm not here on a side. I'm not with your adversary or with you. That's not the point. That is not the question. The question is, are you in my will? Are you with me? You know, a lot of times it makes me think of my dad and the Huskers. I think I said this in leadership that he loves the Huskers and he's like, that's God's team. And I'm like, well, probably not. I think God's up there, like, well, it's gonna be a good game. I know who's gonna win, and I'm just enjoying, you know, like let's hope that somebody there glorifies me while it's happening, you know, right? That's the point. Sometimes in our life, we can be that way too, where we are asking him, Lord, come alongside of me and bless this thing that I'm doing. And he's like, Ah, have you actually asked me if that's the thing I have you doing? And this week we get to see this kind of workout, right? We get to see this question tested, and the Israelites fail by one man. He and he affects the entire group. So when God said to them to keep themselves from these things devoted to destruction, he wasn't kidding. He, of course, knew what would happen, but he allowed it to happen. He allowed them to walk out this path and to choose obedience in full or not. And when the one failed to fully obey, he set the entire community up for destruction. It was a test. And they failed. And the punishment was destruction, complete destruction. So this week we get to see how full obedience or selfish choice result. We get to see: is it complete obedience or complete disobedience? So we all have a choice. And sometimes it doesn't always seem like we have a choice. Sometimes it feels like it was thrust upon us. And I don't know, I'm a mom of three, so I hear it all the time how there was no choice in the situation, right? Uh, it's true's fault. And true's like, I didn't do anything. Lila just yelled out, right? Stop it! And we turn around in the car and we're like, Lila, you stop, you know, because she's the one that made the loud noise. But really, Truit's back there going, and he's being real quiet about it, but he's annoying the heck out of her. And so he's annoying, and he doesn't get the the Lila, knock it off, you know, right? He gets he gets away with it, kind of sorta. And then we hear how there was really no choice in it. I had to scream out at him, he was poking me, right? There was no choice. Well, there's always a choice. Um, Josie, my older daughter, she took a certification course this summer and she met some other young people while she was involved in it, and they're all from different walks of life. And at one point there was a conversation about God. And there was one young gal who had determined that she is a paganist. She had chosen this lifestyle because, according to her, can you guys turn the mic down just a little bit more? I'm like hearing myself breathe, and I don't know about you, but that's kind of annoying. I'm about to yell out like Lila. Just kidding. Um, but, anyways, according to her, she had chosen this lifestyle because God would send her to hell, in her words, for how she for her lifestyle. And how could she ever believe in a God or trust a God that would send her to hell for believing her own truth?

unknown 6:41

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

So there was a young man in the group, and I just love his response, because he said, Well, hell is just separation from God, and why would you want to spend eternity in heaven with a God you so strongly disagree with? She made a choice, but she didn't realize she made a choice. This wasn't her choice, this was God's choice because he wouldn't let her just live out her truth. Right? But she made a choice. So she was offended that by making this choice, it would result in punishment. It's a true epitome of I want my cake and to eat it too. You see, once we eat the cake, we can't have it anymore. It's gone. She didn't think that was right. She didn't think there should be consequence for her decisions, for her choices. She wanted to have a religion that has lots of gods, so she can find the God that says this is okay. And then she can live in that truth for a while. But whether she lives in her alternate reality or her made-up truth, eventually truth will find her out. And her choice will result in punishment or reward. It's complete obedience or complete destruction. And we see the same thing with Jericho. Jericho closed up their gates, they closed their eyes, and they were like, They'll go away. They trembled in fear. But instead of doing what Rahab did, where she turned and said, You uh respond kindly to my family, because I have responded kindly to you, and I know who your God is. And I believe in your God, right? She said, I want to be in his kingdom. So you take me. She made a choice. And it saved her family. And the rest of Jericho shut up the doors, covered their eyes, and hoped that it would just go away. That truth wouldn't seek them out as it had Sion and Og and all the other nations along the way. It's complete obedience or complete destruction. Proverbs 2, 1 through 5 says, My child, listen to what I say and treasure my commands. Tune your ears to wisdom and concentrate on understanding. Cry out for insight and ask for understanding. Search for them as you would for silver. Seek them like hidden treasures, and then you will understand what it means to fear the Lord, and you will gain the knowledge of God. You see, in Joshua chapter 6, we see Jericho shut up those gates. No one in or out. It said their hearts melted at the thought of Israel coming and their God coming. They weren't afraid of Israel. They were afraid of Israel's God. They knew what he was about and that he could defeat them without trying, right? He was God, the one true God. But instead of acknowledging God and turning from their wickedness, they chose to lock the gates and hope that that would just go away. Hope that they could stay away from the truth, finding them out. But Rahab knew. And she said, Please swear to me by the Lord that as I have dealt with you kindly, you will also deal kindly with my father's house. So as we read those stories, we often think the pagans didn't even have a choice. How sad that the entire nation, children, livestock, everybody died. Why would God let that happen? But they did have a choice. Rahab showed that choice. They could have done like Rahab. And maybe more did. There are historical documentation of outside clans that chose to come alongside Israel and follow their God and live among them. Maybe some of the cities as they came through Israel did do this. Maybe some more than we actually know about. But there's always a choice. And shutting the gates and closing your eyes and hoping the truth will not find you out, that's the wrong choice. God knows all, he sees all, and he judges all. And he will not tolerate sin. I had it said to me one time by a pastor, it's not that he can't, it's that he won't. He won't tolerate sin. So we must constantly assess our hearts too. Where is our focus? Are we in his will? Are we completely obeying his call in our lives? Or are we selfishly chasing after things that don't glorify him? Where is our heart? How can we know him better? How can we turn over our heart more and more to grow closer to him? Constantly. Are we choosing God's will? The people of Jericho chose their sin. They chose to cling to their pagan gods and to pretend that what they had heard happening all along the trail from the Israelites and their God, that it wouldn't come to their doorstep and ask the same of them. Complete obedience or complete destruction. Okay, so Jericho is down, right? Walls have collapsed. God gave some pretty specific instructions here. And one in particular is that the things devoted to destruction must be left alone, and the silver and gold items and the items of bronze and iron must go to the treasury. He says to not touch them and to keep them from you and bring them to destruction because if you keep them, they will bring destruction to all of the camp. So this was the warning. Even one of you, you will affect all of you. How many of you know that we do not sin in a bubble? That when we make decisions that are outside of the will of the Lord, that are selfish, that focus on our own desires, that it affects far more than just ourselves, right? I don't know about you, but I've had to experience this time and time again. And I can tell you that in some of my situations that I've walked through in my life, that years later I find out how it affected someone I didn't even know was in the realm of being affected. That it influenced their decisions later. We do not sin in a bubble. And that's what that's what God is showing the Israelites here. You are one community. One community. And when one of you stumbles, all of you will feel it. All of you are in this community. And that's why he called us to hold up our brothers and sisters, why he calls us to hold each other accountable, to be encouragers in the word, right? Complete obedience or complete destruction. Achan is the one, right? He takes the things. Now, when Joshua, Joshua goes out and he sends the people into Ai, right? He sends the spies in and the spies come back. I think there's two errors in this situation as we read this. And one error is Achan took the devoted things, right? And he hid them in his tent, and he was a little stinker and he coveted them, and then he took them and he hid them and he was honri. Okay, so Achan did the wrong. We know that. That's pretty clear. But Joshua did not seek God. And he sent his men in. I mean, can you imagine? They're high on this. Jericho's walls just collapsed. We won. Holy cats! This is awesome. Move on. Let's go to the next channel. Let's take them all over, right? And he forgets to be like, oh wait, God, should we take it over? He's like, we got this God. Thanks for the help, right? Have you ever you've never done that in your life? No. Never been like, all right, I got this now. I see what you're doing. And then he's like, hold on, there's a brick wall. And 36 men die. And here Joshua is. I love Joshua because he's on the ground. He's pouring dirt over his head. And I can see myself in this so much. Like, God, why would you send me here? What are you doing just so that your name isn't glorified? And God's like, get up. Get up. Can you hear him? That's how I hear it in my head. I don't know. It's probably sounded different. We'll find out when we get to heaven. But that's how it sounds in my head, right? Get up. You have sin in your land and it needs to be purged. Go clean it up, Joshua. Go take care of your house. How many of you have done that in your life, right? I am trucking along. What do you mean there is something I should stop for, Lord? I am on a mission. And he's like, nope, there's sin. Stop. Hold on, because 36 men lost their lives because Joshua didn't first say, wait, spies say we should go. What does God say we should do? And then he would have found out, wait, there is a problem in my ranks that I need to tend to. So they go, and God says, pull them all out by the tribe. So he pulls all the tribes out. God picks the tribe. And so they pull out all the clans. God picks the clan. And then they pull out all the families, and then God picks the family. And then, you know, Aiken, you just narrowing, narrowing down. And finally, Achan's like, oh, it was me. Yeah, it was me. You know. He didn't come forward first. Let's just get there first. He came forward when he had to come forward. And then it says, and this one, I had some trouble here. You see, God insists on complete obedience. Or destruction is the result. Right? And that's sin's call. Sin's call is for destruction. It's not God's. That's sin. And when Achan chose to make these decisions, it meant that all of the community felt it. They lost 36 men, but also all of his family had to die. And I don't know about you, but for me, that's a hard one to get my head all the way around. Right? But that's because I'm on this side of the cross. So I don't have to face a complete destruction like Achan did. Achen is a picture of the requirement of sin. The true picture of the requirement of sin. Romans 6.23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God through Christ is eternal life. Do you know how fortunate we are to be on this side of the cross? That we do not have to pay for our sin. For our covetous, for our, I'll just take that one little brick, nobody will notice. Because God has covered it all through his son for you and I. On the contrary, he is gracious and he is merciful to us. But his nature is perfect. So he will not tolerate sin because its destruction is wide and its hold is unyielding. Therefore, God's punishment for disobedience has to be as complete. It has to be as complete. Complete obedience or complete destruction. Now finally, God's people are ready to pursue the next battle battle. Now he said, okay, now it's time to go to AI. We got all this cleaned up, everything's ready to go, and you're gonna go into AI. And they do um, they go into AI like the confidence is there for AI, right? And they go in and they do the little ruse thing where they're like, oh no, you're gonna get us again, and they run away, and AI thinks we're winning again, it's another victory, we'll kill another 36 people, whatever they think. But they're gonna chase them away, right? And keep having these victories, and then they get ambushed, and God wins, and it's awesome, and they're all excited, and so but all of that to show that God was with them, God was the one leading the charge, God was the one whose will they were in and who they were being obedient to. So it was God's victory. And then the really unfortunate thing is that in this one, his his orders are different. He says, at AI, when you purge the land, when you're everything is gone, you go ahead and take the livestock and you take the gold. You see, God didn't need the silver or the gold. That was an obedience test. And if Achan would have only trusted, if he would have only been patient, if he wouldn't have jumped before God said jump, he would have enjoyed the spoils of war with his friends and family. But instead he lost everything because he just couldn't trust God. And I was thinking about this this morning too. As I taught in children, it really hit me that this is something I struggle with. And I don't know if it's something you struggle with, but I am stinking impatient. And I have gotten better as I get older, but then sometimes I get bad again. Right? And I think, God, you know, what is the next thing that I'm supposed to jump on? Where do you have me working? Because I feel like I'm just not purposeful enough. There's gotta be more. And he's saying, wait, Ann, wait, and I don't wait. I just stink at waiting. And I think, oh, you're done with me. You're not gonna use me anymore. And I'm too old for all that, anyways. We're so silly. I'm not old. I mean, my kids think I'm old, but I'm not old. But do you guys do that? Do any does anybody else struggle with that? That's me not trusting God. Not trusting that He has a plan that is better than my plan. And if I were to jump into something without His go-ahead, without His, this is my will, then where would it get me? Destruction. Because I don't get a go-ahead and then turn around and say, Come on, God, let's go! It doesn't work like that. I gotta trust Him fully. I gotta obey Him fully. That is hard for me, folks. But truly, I think that this is good. God is using this to touch my heart here. And I hope He uses it to touch your heart too. Where are you not trusting Him? Where are you thinking, God, where are you? Because He's saying, I'm right here. You wait. You hold your horses, little Missy. I got this. And listen, the reward for Israel was spoils of war. And that's fun. But do you know what the reward for us is? Eternal life with Christ. That's way cool. So complete obedience or complete destruction. God wants to reward us. But first, we gotta trust him completely. And then his reward is made known in so many ways in our life. And then you know what's really cool is that that reward in our life is a revelation of his glory from our life. So it goes out to the world. The way that he works through you, when you trust him and obey him, is magnified tenfold so that more people see him in you. That's a cool reward. And then more people come to him. And you know what? It's not that God wants to withhold things from us or for us to miss out on things. You ever feel like that? Like you're just holding out on me, God. All I want is blah blah blah. By God's saying, no, if you just wait on me, the goodness I will bestow on you will be so much fuller and so much better and so much more complete that you would never even, you wouldn't even know how to get there without him. You wouldn't even know that that was possible. That's how good it is. When we wait on the Lord, but we have to trust him. It means I wait on the Lord's goodness. The only goodness that he can provide. Only him. It's better in completeness. It's better than anything this world could ever offer us. So this week, I hope that as you search your heart, as you continue to study Joshua, and you start to see maybe yourself in the story sometimes, you will just lift your life up to the Lord and say, Lord, I surrender my will to you. What is your will? How can I trust you more? Maybe you might not want to ask that question because he might show you and it might be hard. But it will be good. I guarantee you it will be good. Because our God is good. And if it's not good yet, he's not done. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much. So you are a good God. Lord, that you carry us through. And that all you want is for us to trust you fully, completely. Lord, that you know the big picture, and we get so held up in the little detail, the little picture that we think we know it all. But we don't know. But we know you. Lord, may we just trust you and obey you. Lord, seek your will. Seek your wisdom and not our own. Thank you, Lord, for your words. Amen. Thanks for joining me today. If your soul was refreshed by this pause in the word, then I hope that you'll continue to join me weekly for these await and arise meditations. My hope is that this podcast space will be a reprieve for you to just take a pause away from the world, to be refreshed in the word, and to await in the presence of a good God. Would you go to the comment section and leave a word or a scripture that's lifted you up this week? I really do love to see how God is working in all of our lives. And my desire is to see that this space just grows as a community of people who come together and encourage each other in the Word. I want to see Him working in all of us. It's just such a sweet reminder that we are all in this together. And God, He goes before us. So until next time, I'm praying your heart stays anchored in His truth. AngelaRaber.com and you can find those episodes there. Meditations come out each week on Thursday, and live teachings are weekly on Monday, and I post those on Tuesday. We hope that you'll subscribe and feel free to share this episode with family and friends and on social media. For more information for connecting with a community Bible study in your area, you can also click those links below. You can join a Connect group online, or you can find a community Bible study in your town or in your area that you can join in person. It is so important to be in the Word, meditating on it and studying it for yourself. So it is my encouragement to you to find a Bible teaching church and an in depth Bible study and dig in. Thanks for listening. Now, awake in his presence and arise to his call.