“Joshua told the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.’” (Joshua 3:5)

Consecration refers to the act of dedicating oneself to the specific purposes or intentions of God. It’s a very deliberate act that requires a person to stop doing pretty much everything else that’s in the diary to focus purely and entirely on the things that God is doing. For the Israelites it meant stepping out in faith believing that God was going to deliver to them the Promised Land that they had been journeying towards for the last 40 years. The requirement was that they had to focus on God and set everything else aside for that part of the season of adventuring with Him.

Their first step in faith caused the Jordan River to stop flowing in the season of peak flood for a great distance upstream while the water flowing to the Dead Sea stopped altogether. (See vs. 14-16) If a nation had ever needed encouragement that God was going to go before them and to follow behind them it was in that moment and in that moment He showed them exactly where He was.

Any one of us might find ourselves in a similar place in life. Faced with a river to cross (a difficult situation to deal with) the call upon each of us is not to dig in and fight the good fight but to stop, to “consecrate ourselves” before God so that He can do “amazing things among us.”

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Question:

What are you facing right now? What difficult situations or worrying circumstances are occupying space in your mind and spirit? Can you stop and consecrate yourself to God so that He can do amazing things among you? Can you look to see where God is in the adventure with you?

Prayer:

Christ be with me, Christ within me

Christ behind me, Christ before me

Christ beside me, Christ to win me

Christ to comfort me and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger

Christ in hearts of all that love me

Christ in mouth of friend or stranger.              (Prayer on St Patrick’s breastplate)