We were in Jericho proper, a Palestinian controlled territory.  I would get to teach from a balcony overlooking the oldest city in the world. Limestone houses dotted the panoramic view! To the right a tel, a mountain of dirt, held the secret remains of a city destroyed by the strategy of an army empowered by the God of the universe!

I, of course, taught on Joshua. Moses was dead and now Joshua had no recourse but to lead the children of Israel through the Jordan into the Promised Land! He could not go back! There was no other place to go but forward. After he gets across the Jordan, he knows that the next stronghold is Jericho, a strongly fortified city. One morning he is up, no doubt reading the Torah, filling himself with the Word of God, feeling a little apprehensive about taking the city. The Bible says that Joshua “lifted up His eyes and looked.” When the Bible uses that phrase, the one looking always looks up with expectation! And so Joshua did and, when de does, he sees “The Angel Lord” whom he worships as God. This “Angel Lord” gives his all the strategy he needs in order to take the city.

As I encouraged my tour group to “lift up their eyes” in their own Jericho-situations, I pointed above the tel of Jericho, and a rainbow appeared in the sky filling the panorama in front of us with undeniable color!

The story of Jericho and Joshua has taken on a greater meaning for me. I will never be able to read that Book or hear those names  without remembering how God met me on the plains of Jericho in The Holy Land!

“All’s fair in love and war,” they say. If that is so, let’s allow this current war between Israel and Hamas (Operation Protective Edge) to remind us of how Satan, the enemy of our souls, knows nothing of love, only war.

Satan’s aim is to discredit our God by attacking mankind, the crown of creation—and he pulls all stops to do it.

I watched media footage of Hamas soldiers raising their heads above their underground lair, like deadly vipers, to snipe soldiers in the Israeli Defense Force.

“Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit they have made. The trouble they cause recoils on them; their violence comes down on their own heads” (Psalms 7:16-17)

I saw reporters travel through Hamas’ subterranean tunnels that must have required painstaking hours to burrow through dirt, rock, and silt to infiltrate Israel’s territory. Like feral rats, Hamas soldiers snaked their way through miles of tightness to smuggle weapons and venom.

“The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden” (Psalms 9:15).

I listened to news reports of Hamas using the innocent Palestinians as human shields, firing their rockets from civilian areas, knowing that Israel tries to avoid casualties among the innocent.

“For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land” (Psalm 37:9).

When one civilian complex in Gaza was hit by Israeli missiles, a Palestinian proclaimed to the reporter, “There is no Hamas here!” The questions remains, “Where are they, then?” Do the Palestinians not know where Hamas soldiers are hiding in a land area of 139 miles? Do they not know where a large cache of missiles is being stored and from where they are being launched?

“They do not speak peaceably, but devise false accusations against those who live quietly in the land” (Psalm 35: 20)

What’s my agenda? In a war, that’s what we must all ask. Do I court the devil to despise my brother? In a poem by Robert Browning, “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” the speaker is a monk, who hates a fellow monk (Brother Lawrence). His hatred runs so deep that he sells his own soul to the devil in hopes that somehow he will ensnare Brother Lawrence in the transaction.

My prayer is that we would realize our true enemy. In the spiritual battle, it is satan. In this natural battle, the enemy of Israel is Hamas; the enemy of the Palestinians is Hamas—even though they have been deceived by Hamas to believe the opposite. What if the Palestinians worked together with Israel against their common enemy? Their lives and the lives of the Israelis would be so much better.

Israel has been fighting for the safety of its citizens. Hamas fights because of their hatred of Israel—and whoever can be used to feed this hatred, they will use them.

May we never cry, “There is no Hamas here!”—all the time we are hiding the enemy and feeding into his hatred! Let us never cry, “There is no Hamas here,” not when the enemy has eroded our economy, delighted in our living in poverty and substandard conditions, deceived us into accepting a lie, and rejoiced in our hating those who mean us no harm.

As in the spiritual, let us not sell our souls in hopes of ensnaring the enemy. Let our hatred not run so deeply! Let’s do as Yeshua did and not allow our hatred for the enemy to determine how we fight a war. In Yeshua’s war against sin, he fought it with love. May we do the same!

Let’s make sure we are praying!

The Gospel of Matthew (26:20) makes a point of letting us know that Jesus was “reclining at the table” during His Passover Seder with His disciples. Why did Matthew do that?

When God told Moses and the Israelites to celebrate Passover (1500 years before Yeshua’s Seder with the disciples), they were to do so with their staff in hand and sandals on their feet. You see, they were an enslaved people, but at the moment of their liberation, they had to be ready to move forward.

Then the Lamb is killed, his blood put on the doorposts of the Israelite homes. The death angel comes. Pharoah’s firstborn is killed along with the firstborn of all of Egypt that were not under the blood!

Then Yeshua comes. The One who was their Bread of Life–pure and sinless like unleavened bread…like the manna that had come from heaven. Yeshua was seated among them–the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the spotless Lamb of God.

The One who had and would purchase their freedom was among them. So what did He do? Yeshua illustrated “resting” for them . . . and John followed suit. As the Lord reclined, John leaned against the Lord’s breast, enjoying His presence, and he ate lovingly and gratefully of the Passover Meal with the Passover Lamb.

John had found the key to “resting”; therefore, he was able to follow Yeshua to the cross, to receive the Lord’s mother as his own, and to outrun Peter as they scurried to the tomb to investigate Mary’s report of the missing body.

There IS a key to resting. Knowing that our Lamb has paid the price for sin.  Defeated it on the cross. Stripped it of its power to enslave and destroy. Rendered it powerless because of the blood. A battle against sin is not OUR war. We’ve been given the green light to “recline.” No more slaves to sin . . . but free in Yeshua. Free to enjoy Him! It’s time to recline!

Abba, teach us how to rest.

While I waited at the transit station for my son’s bus to arrive, another bus pulled up. As the door opened, several people of various ages descended with various disabilities, either limping, walking with a cane or a walker. Of course my mind automatically connected the physical with the spiritual.

I thought about how we come to God sometimes. I know of a man who is in his 60‘s; in his youth, he did about as much as the world had to offer. After having two knee surgeries, cancer, the death of a daughter and a wife, he is crippled in more ways than one. He’s in church now, wants to be a deacon, but feels he doesn’t have the physical ability to serve.

We allow the world to beat us up and have its hey day in our lives. We give to the enemy our days of youth and vitality. We operate in the mentality of “Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die” (Luke 12:19).

Then our bus arrives. We are aged, crippled, maimed, disabled . . . and our minds turn to Him, the One who called out to us during the world’s heyday but either we could not or did not hear. We turn to the One who chorused, (Ecclesiastes 12:1). But we didn’t heed the voice because we were enjoying the pleasures of sin.  We didn’t realize that the pleasures lasted only for a season. (Hebrews 11:12)

What is so amazing, however, is that when the world chews us up and spits us out, the Lord is there to catch us or pick us up and take us just the way we are  . . . with varying disabilities. In that state, there is usually never a lifetime to clean us up, but when we turn our hearts and minds toward him, He will never reject us.

I don’t know where you are. Maybe you have made a commitment to serve him, but not totally sold out. Maybe you have said yes to him, but your mind has not been transformed. Maybe you are limping in your faith or on a cane as you walk out sanctification or relying upon a walker to get you to the point of trusting God. It doesn’t matter. He loves you too much to reject you.

PRAYER: Abba, that’s what I love about you! You wait on us to wait on you! You see beyond the cane, and the limp and the walker and you love me, regardless of how much of my life I offer you. My prayer, Abba, is that in whatever season I say yes to you, let me offer you the BEST of that season . . . because I know that when my bus pulls up, you’ll be there . . . waiting.