I’ve always been a movie person – everything from the storyline to the plot twists and amazing acting gives me that dopamine rush. While I’m not big on risk-taking, I enjoy watching it in dramas and action films. I guess that’s why reading Joshua’s story in the Bible got me excited – most of the scenes in the Old Testament will do that to you.
In this particular story of Joshua’s life as the leader of Israel, the Israelites have to go up in battle against Ai. God, always favoring them, assures Joshua that they’d win the war. That part of the story is great – but as I was reading, I got stuck on a scene where the men of the city of Ai left their city to go out in pursuit of Israel (Joshua 8:17). I couldn’t help but wonder why the king of the city was not strategic enough for battle. He got so engrossed in the pursuit of the Israelites that he left the entire city unmanned. On the contrary, much as Joshua had God’s favor to win over the city, he had been a lot more strategic to lay out his game plan for the battle (of course, God is the reason for such great strategy).
It really got me thinking about how underrated life is as a battlefield. Every day we go to battle, and there’s a different war to win; yet rarely do we approach life like that.
I understand why God would emphasize that we put on the full armor of God. The good news, however, is that as Christians, we are assured of God’s favor. In fact, He literally calls us more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). So, our posture when showing up in the battlefield should not only be confidence but of victory. Then again, we are human, right? More often than not, we do not realize we are going to battle, so we just show up to wing it, yeah? But that’s where we get it wrong because there is a big difference between faith and winging it.
Faith is when you rely on God to help you come up with plans and establish them to achieve His purpose. It entails preparing for war first, then going all in, trusting that God’s got you. Winging it, on the other hand, is going to war blindly and hoping that God will rescue you. Faith and hope are not the same thing. One of them (faith) employs a posture of confidence (Hebrews 11:1) while the other stems from a place of helplessness. When you know you are a child of God, you are not just another helpless person doing life. You may be helpless in the sense that you cannot be successful without God, but not on any other account. You are already walking in victory, not hoping that things work out. You must walk with your head up high, in faith, trusting that God is working everything out for your good.
We must understand the aspect of strategy even as we advance in confidence. You cannot afford to keep your eye off of the current blessings in your life, especially because we are a children of God.
Many times, our pursuit for the next big thing gets us so worked up that we are blinded from the need to preserve and appreciate what we already have. In a medical drama I was watching, there was this family that went all out to get the best treatment for their sick daughter, so much so that they forgot about the feelings of the healthy one. Instead, they got the second child, a son, to donate stem cells and other body organs to his sister. Eventually, the pressure caught up with the young boy, who then attempted suicide. While it would be easy to see the fault in this family, it is just the same thing we do with our lives.
We forget about our current blessings because we want so badly to get to the next big thing. Something about culture and society makes us celebrate aggression for pursuit of more than contentment in the present. Because you are busy looking for a better job, you forget or take lightly, the fervent prayers you made to get the one you currently have. It is a miracle that you got through college debt-free, but somehow you can’t get over the fact that the job market isn’t so easy to penetrate. (1 Thess. 16-18). Believe me, I get it! I think one of the greatest consequences of the fall of humanity is that we are off-balance, and every day is a battle to maintain the balance.
No one is asking you not to be aggressive and pursue more for your life. No one is advocating for getting too comfortable with the outcomes of things. However, you cannot leave your city unmanned, though there is more for you to achieve. You have to secure the place you are at now. You have to do the best in the initial place even as you pursue the next. The goal is to keep watch over the city as you pursue the next thing.
