Found it in Joshua

Yesterday my mom blogged about bibles, which you can read here: http://odlemountain.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-bible.html

In her post she mentioned the Life Application bible, which has all the usual scripture, but at the bottom of each page it breaks apart certain verses and gives ways they can be applied in your life. The applications also dig deep into the verse and give good explanations of how to understand what you are reading, and even reference other verses found in different areas of the bible that would give insight into the particular verse you are trying to understand. For our wedding gift, my mom gave both Jake and I our first Life Application bibles (NIV) and it is my preferred bible to read, especially when I am in a bible study, which I am now. A few weeks ago I started into my 4th semester of a women’s bible study through church, and currently we are trucking through Joshua.

The point of this post, is to tell you about an ‘ah-hah’ moment that I had yesterday when reading through my bible application notes dealing with a particular verse in Joshua chapter 11. Here is the verse:

Joshua 11:15 As the Lord commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did it; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses.

Now, as my mom pointed out in her post, sometimes when taking part in a bible study, the teacher doesn’t necessarily like you to rely on your application notes already printed in the Life App bible - because it takes away from the process of learning and making connections/meaning out of scripture on your own. My teacher has asked us to try to gain insight into the verses first on our own with the study book that we use (The New Inductive Study Series by Kay Arthur), and then if we want to we can look down at our bible application notes afterwards and see what we missed coming up with. Well, I am certainly glad that I did this yesterday because I had completely missed something very applicable to my life in this verse.

Here is what the application notes said about Joshua 11:15 –

Joshua carefully obeyed all the instructions given by God. This theme of obedience is repeated frequently in the book of Joshua, partly because obedience is one aspect of life the individual believer can control. We can’t always control our understanding because we may not have all the facts. We can’t control what other people do or how they treat us. However, we can control our choice to obey God. Whatever new challenges we may face, the Bible contains relevant instructions that we can choose to ignore or choose to follow.

I italicized the parts that really struck me, and if those words don’t directly apply to our adoption process then I don’t know what does. In fact, a week or so ago I mentioned that I felt like in our adoption journey that 95% was completely out of my control….then I went on to change that to 99%. But, for some reason I kept holding onto that 1% of control for some reason. At the time that I wrote that post I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that 1% of control was that I had, but I knew it was there because I felt it. And, now I have the answer. My obedience. I hadn’t thought about it that way before until yesterday when I read those app notes.

As I went on to finish out chapter 11 in Joshua I came across another really cool application that relates to our adoption. The application note was for Joshua 11:18: Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. And the application said:

The conquest of much of the land of Canaan seems to have happened quickly (we can read about it in one sitting), but it actually took 7 years. We often expect quick changes in our lives and quick victories over sin. But our journey with God is a life-long process, and the changes and victories may take time. It is easy to grow impatient with God and feel like giving up hope because things are moving too slowly. When we are close to a situation, it is difficult to see progress. But when we look back we can see that God never stopped working.

If you are in a similar situation, I hope these application notes encourage you the way they did me.