Identity #17 - C.S. Lewis On the Real Self

(Window, in our house)

Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity on the "real self." I'll add some parenthetical comments.

"There are no real personalities apart from God. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. [In Jesus, we see what humanity is. Some say, "Well, I'm only human." If only that were true! The Jesus-idea is that, without God's kingdom-rule in our lives, we're sub-human.] 

Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints. 

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality; but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. [This is the Jesus-paradox; viz., that to live the truly good life one must not focus on living the good life. Or, as Lewis wrote elsewhere, if one goes into a beautiful garden expecting to be blown away by its beauty, this will not often happen. But go into the same garden to say your prayers, and nine times out of ten the result will be to be stunned by the beauty. Call this the way of indirection.] 

It will come when you are looking for Him... Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in." [We find ourselves in losing ourselves; we find our true selves by losing ourselves in God.]

Could There Be More Than One God?

(Near Brasilia, Brazil)

In one of  my Philosophy of Religion classes at MCCC a student asked, "Why could there not be more than one God who created the universe?" 

Instead of there being one God who exists and created all that is, why could there not be multiple Gods? 

One answer uses Ockham's Razor, which states that causes should not be multiplied unnecessarily. For example, if I come home and discover a pan of freshly baked brownies on the table, I understand my wife Linda to have made them. But then someone suggests, "Why could not the brownies have been made by several bakers? Why assume just one person made them?" Because, using Ockham's Razor, there is no need to multiply causes unnecessarily. That the cause of the pan of brownies is "my wife Linda" is enough explanation. Similarly, "one God" [esp. the theistic God, who is omniscient and omnipotent] is enough explanation for the cause of the universe.

I'm thinking that one could employ German philosopher Leibniz's "Identity of Indiscernibles" to argue that the idea of multiple theistic Gods is incoherent. This is an idea in process. Here we go!

Assume that "God" has essential attributes, which causally determine God's contingent attributes. For example, because God is essentially love, God's responses to unloving situations will be logically predictable. When God sees death, e.g., God responds with comfort out of his loving compassion. God's particular manifestations of his loving compassion are not essential to the being of God, but contingent.

Now imagine there are two Gods, or even twenty-two Gods. If we define "God" as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then Gods One through Twenty-two are also omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Were they not, they would not be God. 

Given these omni-attributes, each of the twenty-two Gods will respond in exactly the same ways to, e.g., a particular human death. Sharing all the needed knowledge, they each would choose the best response to that death, which would be the same. This would mean that each of the twenty-two Gods would share not only the same essential attributes, but also the same contingent attributes.

What is called "Leibniz's Law," viz. the Identity of Indiscernibles, states that no two objects have exactly the same properties. But in our example we stated that twenty-two Gods share exactly the same essential and contingent properties. Using, therefore, Leibniz's Law, Gods 1-22 are "indiscernible"; namely, they are the same object, which is to say there is only one God.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

"The Identity of Indiscernibles (hereafter called the Principle) is usually formulated as follows: if, for every property F, object x has F if and only if object y has F, then x is identical to y. Or in the notation of symbolic logic:

∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y.

This formulation of the Principle is equivalent to the Dissimilarity of the Diverse as McTaggart called it, namely: if x and y are distinct then there is at least one property that x has and y does not, or vice versa."

If at least one of our twenty-two Gods had the requisite essential attributes, but each of the other twenty-one Gods had different essential attributes, then each of the other twenty-one Gods would not be God. The same applies to any varying contingent properties. Therefore, there can only be one God, and the idea of multiple Gods is logically incoherent.

Letter to My Church Family - Sept. 28, 2019

(Worship at Redeemer)

(Just sent this letter to my church family.)

Good Morning Redeemer Family!

Here are some things I want to share with you.

PRAYING WOMEN and PRAYING MEN meet Sunday morning, 9:30. We are a praying church!

TOMORROW MORNING - Worship, and we're still preaching on revival and awakening - Redeemer is a revivalist culture! And, we'll be experiencing an overflow of the Spirit's activity from the weekend with Steve and Wendy Backlund!

WEDNESDAY PRAYING GROUP meets in the sanctuary, 10 AM. We are a praying church!

INSIDE/OUT this coming Thursday, Oct. 3. I will present Session Three of my book How God Changes the Human Heart (I'm now writing it - hopefully out in summer 2020.

CHRIS BAJKIEWICZ (our missionary to Mexico and beyond) preaches Sunday morning, October 13. 

POWER AND PRESENCE RENEWAL CONFERENCE in COLUMBUS, NEW JERSEY - Nov. 8-9-10. I will be preaching and teaching at this event, with Clay Ford and others. 

HEALING OF TRAUMA AND PTSD with MIKE HUTCHINGS (from Randy Clark's Global Awakening). Feb. 21-22-23.

THE IDENTITY CONFERENCE with ROBBY DAWKINS and JIM GOLL. June 21-25, 2020. Registration is now open - go HERE. 

Love,

PJ

Teaching Children Is a High Calling

(Some of our Redeemer kids)

I serve in our Sunday morning children's ministry two Sundays out of every six weeks. I teach kids, get to know them, pray with them and for them, worship with them, and have fun with them. This is good for me, for the kids, and for our church family.

I invest in the lives of our children. Given the moral and spiritual condition of America, there may be no greater cause to invest my life in.

At Redeemer we have 60+ adults who, on Sunday mornings, take turns investing in the lives of our kids. (Thank you!) This feels healthy to me. Our children get to know many of our adults. They see adults that love them, want to spend time with them, and want to impart spiritual and moral wisdom to them. Some children do not see this often. Some, never. (Recently I told a teen that I saw some great abilities in them. Immediately they said, "No one has ever told me anything like that before.")

It is my joy to spend this coming Sunday with second through fifth graders. I've been teaching them for several years, love them, and look forward to being with them. An added bonus is I think they like me. Some even think I'm funny, which encourages me!

Our kids classes are now focusing on "the armor of God." This Sunday our verse is Ephesians 6:15: with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. I have a great team of teachers with me. When we do this lesson, we will give it our very best. This Sunday our kids are going to learn some of life's most important lessons. They will interact with us. And, as often happens, one or more of them will ask a question we cannot answer. (Even me, and I am a many-degreed, professional theologian.)

As I look at America I see children who do not live with both parents. I see children of divorce (for more on this, see here). I see behavior problems.

I asked a school principle in Monroe about this. "What do you attribute behaviorally challenged kids to?" Immediately he said, "Their parents." Or lack thereof.

Every child needs a mentor. A spiritual father and mother. Ours is, largely, a mentorless generation. I have even heard some parents boast of "leaving our children to make decisions on their own." How irresponsible it is to abandon them to their immaturity! This would be like a sherpa, who says to a beginner, "I leave you to climb Mount Everest on your own."

At Redeemer many are preparing our children morally and spiritually for the future. We are creating a generation of worshipers (you should see our kids worship!). Our kids pray for the sick. They are growing in biblical knowledge. We adults teach them how to do this.

And they give. I have seen some of our children give sacrificially to help a needy person. Several of our kids serve in the Soup Kitchen we helped start.

A teacher gives away what they have. My experience is that, in teaching our children, I gain more than I have given.

My sons are no longer kids. But our church family has many children, and I have a responsibility to be one of their many mentors.

This is a high calling. In today's world, is there any higher? Is anything more important than this?

Power and Presence Renewal Conference - Columbus, New Jersey - Nov. 8-9-10

Join me in New Jersey for a renewal conference in conjunction with NJ regional pastors that will revive, refresh and empower you!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8 Location: Tabernacle Baptist Church, Burlington , NJ

6:30 PM Doors Open

7 PM Power and Presence Renewal Conference begins

Worship and Guest Speaker: Dr. John Piippo, HSRM Co-Director

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9 Location: First Baptist Church Mt. Holly, Mt. Holly, NJ

8:30 AM Doors Open

9:00 AM Guest Speaker: Dr. Clayton Ford, HSRM Co-Director

10:00 AM Workshops Session I

11:15 AM Workshops Session II

12:30 All-conference lunch provided

Saturday afternoon: No scheduled sessions

6:30 PM Doors Open

7 PM Worship and Guest Speaker TBA

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 10 Locations: Various Participating Churches TBA

SUNDAY MORNING SERVICES: Various AM start times per participating churches

HSRM leadership and local pastors speaking at participating churches

6:30 PM Doors Open Location: Columbus Baptist Church, Columbus, NJ

7:00 Worship and Guest Speaker TBA

Where Spiritual Leadership Comes From

(Maumee Bay State Park, Ohio)

I take one afternoon off during the week to meet with God and pray. To listen. To what God wants to say to me. I expect our church's staff to do the same.  

I have been doing this for forty-three years. I write about what I have learned from doing this in my book Praying: Reflections on Forty Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

I have been teaching pastors and Christians leaders, since my 1977 seminary class at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, to spend much time with God as the necessary foundation of their ministry.

Most pastors and Christian leaders don't do something like this. They don't have a significant praying life. They have shared this with me. (I estimate I've taught almost four thousand in seminaries, conferences, retreats, and one-on-one.) 

A significant praying life looks like Jesus, as early in the morning, as was his habit, he went to a lonely place, where he prayed. 

If Jesus did this, who do I think I am not to do this? Perhaps I am God Almighty?

Spiritual leadership depends on this. To lead spiritually, you must spend significant time with God (it's a relationship), to include speaking with and listening to God. There is no substitute for this. Being too busy for this doesn't count.

Ruth Haley Barton writes:

"Spiritual leadership emerges from our willingness to stay involved with our own soul—that place where God’s Spirit is at work stirring up our deepest questions and longings to draw us deeper into relationship with him. Staying involved with our soul is not narcissistic navel gazing; rather, this kind of attentiveness helps us stay on the path of becoming our true self in God—a self that is capable of an ever-deepening yes to God’s call on our life." (Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry, pp. 25-26)

Redeemer - Our Website

Redeemer Fellowship Church's website is HERE. 

Our staff is HERE.

Announcements/events is HERE.

Giving is HERE.

Our Facebook page is HERE.

Our location is HERE.

Identity # 16 - The Identity That Makes You Free

(Tree, in my backyard.)

Our freedom is a function of our attachment. The more we are attached (addicted; French attache) to the affirmation and rejection of other people, the less free we are. 

I know this too well from personal experience. I have been too attached, too connected, to what other people think of me. This attachment has prevented me from thinking of other people, without conditions. Which is how Jesus thought and thinks about us.

The way out of this bondage is to discover your true self, who you are, and what you are intended to be. Which is: a child of God, forgiven, loved, and restored to community with God. 

You are the beloved of God. The more this truth has descended from my mind into my heart and has become my very being, my core identity, the more I experience the freedom Christ has called us to. Included in this freedom is: freedom to love others as God loves them. One sign of this is compassion towards others.

I love the way Henri Nouwen expresses this. He writes: "The identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame. (Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, 70)

The amazing love of God transcends all earthly loves, refers to us as loved by God, and sets us free.

What Makes a Pastor Credible (The Presence-Driven Church)

In Leading the Presence-Driven Church I make the case for the primordiality of experience and encounter with God. Our first order of being, before theologizing and theorizing, is knowing God, by experience.

Such knowing is to be ongoing. Knowing God by experience is in the continuous tense. Today, now, I know the Lord.

In my book I wrote about pastor-colleagues who live in the ongoing knowledge of the Lord. As much as I admire their reflections on their experiences, I am more captured by the experiences themselves, sans interpretation. Ongoing experiential knowing of the Lord makes them credible witnesses to the Lord.

These presence-driven leaders trust in the Lord with all their heart, and experience God making straight their paths. Dallas Willard writes:

"Credibility in any sort of spiritual leadership derives from a life in the Spirit, from the person’s personal encounter and ongoing relationship with God." (Willard, Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, p. 25)

LETTER TO MY CHURCH FAMILY (Bethel Redding @ Redeemer)

(Worship @ Redeemer)

(I sent this out to my church family.)

Sept. 21, 2019

Good morning Redeemer family!

What a beautiful evening we had last night with Steve and Wendy Backlund, and the three Bethel students they brought with them.

Steve and Wendy's teaching is clear and empowering. It's disciple-making stuff! And, the Bethel students led in powerful prayer ministry.

They are with us today and tomorrow. Here's the schedule.

SAT.

10 - Steve & Wendy

2-3 - Worship soaking time led by Bethel students.

6:30 - Steve & Wendy

Sun.

10:30 - Worship; Steve and Wendy

6:30 PM - Closing empowerment evening with Steve and Wendy, Bethel students.

This is revival-making stuff. Why not us? Why not now?

Love,

PJ

Identity # 15 - Love Is the Measure of Our Identity

(Michigan International Speedway's Christmas Light Show)



"The measure of our identity, of our being (the two are the same), is the amount of our love for God. The more we love earthly things, reputation, importance, pleasures, ease, and success, the less we love God." 

Thomas Merton

The more things we love, the more our love, and hence, our identity, is dissipated. Our love, and our self, gets spread thin. We become dissipated among things that have no real value. "Then," wrote Merton, "when we come to die, we find we have squandered all our love (that is, our being) on things of nothingness, and that we are nothing, we are death."

Because we have wasted our lives; we have squandered our love.

Sometimes, when I read an obituary, I see that the deceased, John Doe, "loved to hunt and fish, and loved his sports teams." So, who was John Doe? He was an avid hunter, fisherman, and sports lover. Are these wrong? No. But if they are the things that define John Doe and nothing more, then how sad and meaningless a life he led. Especially if John Doe has been a Detroit Lions fan.

Merton wanted his life to be measured by his love of God, and from that, measured by his love for the least of His children.

Devote yourself fully to loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Out of this great love, discern how to dispense this love to others, in both word and action. 

You are what you love. (See here.)

**
My three books are:

Leading the Presence-Driven Church

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God

Encounters with the Holy Spirit (co-edited with Janice Trigg)

After a break I'll continue writing Transformation: How God Changes the Human Heart.

Then, the Lord willing, Linda and I will write our book on Relationships.

Then: Technology and Spiritual Formation.

A CALL TO PRAY; BACKLUND WEEKEND

(Redeemer Monroe)

(JUST SENT THIS LETTER TO MY CHURCH FAMILY)

Good Morning Redeemer Family!

A few weeks ago, during one of my praying times, I felt the Lord tell me to issue a call to prayer for our Redeemer family.

So, I am calling us to pray. Thursday, Sept. 19. 7 PM. At our church building.

I am excited about the timing of our weekend with Steve and Wendy Backlund. This is going to be so empowering for all of us, including me!

Here is the schedule.

Fri. morning, Sept. 20. 10-11:30 AM. Steve and Wendy meet with parents, teachers, and anyone interested in Declarations and Kids. Kid time provided by myself and Holly.

Fri evening, 6:30 PM. Session 1.

Sat. morning, 10 AM, Session 2.

Sat. afternoon, 2-3 PM. Soaking Session led by Bethel students.

Sat. evening, 6:30 PM, Session 3.

Sun. morning, Sept. 22, 10:30 AM, Session 4.

Sun. evening, Sept. 22, 6:30 PM, Session 5.

Steve has contacted me, and wrote: "We will never be the same again!"

Amen,

PJ

Get Ignited! Steve and Wendy Backlund @ Redeemer This Weekend!

We won't be looking at videos - Steve and Wendy will be with us all weekend.  :)

Wisdom

(Me, climbing the big dune at Warren Dunes State Park, in Michigan)

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. 

Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

I begin this day by opening up the Bible to Proverbs. I slow-cook in it. To acquire wisdom you have to dwell in the slow-cooker.

This is why, in 1970, I changed my college major to philosophy. The word "philosophy" means "the love of wisdom" (philo-sophia).

As a philosopher, read the world's wisdom literature.  This is what philosophers do.  I have read Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Kant, Descartes and Hume, Anselm and Aquinas, the Buddha and Confucius, the Upanishads and the Koran, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre, Russell and Wittgenstein, Foucault and Derrida, Merton and Nouwen, and others. I read philosophy when driving the car. It is my bathroom reading. I study it. Scholars have taught me. 

I love wisdom. I treasure it. It has supreme value to me.

The love of wisdom is not a claim to be wise. Saying "I have become wise" is an indicator of foolishness. But you won't be wise without having a foundational desire for wisdom.

Above all else, desire wisdom.

Have you seen those cartoons where someone seeking wisdom struggles to the top of a mountain, to ask a white-bearded man with long grey hair a question? For me, the book of Proverbs lies open on summit. God meets me, on the mountain, this morning.

"Above all else," I am told, "get wisdom." Above everything else? Above money? Above fame? Above beauty? Above possessions? Yes! To understand this is to be wise. To think otherwise is to be an ordinary fool. 

This morning I'm after some more wisdom. I collect it like diamonds, and mount them in my journal. I polish them by reading, and re-reading them. 

I am reading Proverbs in Eugene Peterson's The Message. Peterson writes a beautiful introduction to Proverbs on its core theme.

Wisdom is different from knowledge. Wisdom may contain knowledge; knowledge may have no wisdom.

"“Wisdom” is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has virtually nothing to do with information as such, with knowledge as such." (Peterson, The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In Contemporary Language, p. 870)

A college degree does not guarantee wisdom.

Peterson writes:

• Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children,
• handling our money
• and conducting our sexual lives,
• going to work
• and exercising leadership,
• using words well
• and treating friends kindly,
• eating and drinking healthily,
• cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace.
• Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God. (Ib.)

Here I go again, ascending to the mountain top.

"These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David's son, Israel's king -

written down so we'll know how to live well and right,

to understand what life means and where it's going."

Proverbs 1:1

***
My book Praying is available as a Kindle book HERE. 
Paperback HERE and HERE.
Hard cover HERE. 
You can contact me at: johnpiippo@msn.com.

My Summer Reading

(When I was in Eldoret, Kenya.)

As a boy I read lots of books. One after the other. I used the library, all the time.

My parents encouraged my brother Mike and I to read. We both love reading, learning, evaluating ideas, and being  caught up in a story. 

This has not stopped! It's increased, I think. More than ever, I see that knowledge is power. The pen is greater than the sword. (And, I married a reader!)

I'm now reading The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great, by Ben Shapiro. If you have a problem with that, what's your problem?

I am a philosopher. (B.A.; PhD) In philosophy we read all sides, as much as we can. Philosophers are voracious readers. They are always looking at arguments and counter-arguments. You won't fully understand your position until you understand the other side.

This is not intimidating or threatening to our safety. This is because philosophers are interested in ideas and the reasoning (logic) behind them. We are trained to "bracket" the author of the ideas. This helps us be less biased and more objective. (BTW - no one is perfectly objective, including you. No one is with bias, to include you. Me as well. Perhaps [though I doubt it] logic is itself biased, as certain postmodern critical theorists claim.)

Study more. React less. Understand. Then, speak, if at all.

In reading Shapiro's book I'm making connections with German philosopher and critical theorist Jurgen Habermas, and Italian philosopher and statesman Marcello Pera. More on that, maybe sometime in the future. In reading I make lots of connections.

In preparing for my New York City trip this summer, teaching Chinese theological students, I read Mao's Little Red Book. There's a new Maoist movement in China that threatens Christians. I must understand this.

I just read Peter Singer's book on Karl Marx. (I began reading Marxist theory in 1978, when I taught a class at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary called "Contemporary Views of Man.") "Socialism" is a word being tossed around in America. Do you know what socialism is? You begin to understand by reading at the foundation, which includes Marx. 

As for the rest of my summer reading, here it was. 

The Assault on American Excellence, by Anthony Kronman.

Hyper-Grace: Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message, by Michael L. Brown.

Jezebel's War with America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide, by Michael L. Brown.

The City of God, by St. Augustine.

Coming Apart: The State of White America - 1960-2010, by Charles Murray.

Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness, by David Powlison. 

Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump, by Robby Soave. 

Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, by Soren Kierkegaard.

Moral Revolution: The Naked Truth About Sexual Purity, by Kris Vallotton.

Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for the Existence of God, by Jerry Walls & Trent Dougherty.

Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost, by Craig Keener.

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America, by Timothy Snyder.

World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech, by Franklin Foer. 

As I begin the fall season...

I've got a hard copy of Craig Keener's The Mind of the Spirit: Paul's Approach to Transformed Thinking. I'm opening it up this week.

Today I received a used copy of Harold I. Brown's Perception, Theory, and Commitment: The New Philosophy of Science. Dr. Brown was one of my undergraduate philosophy professors. He introduced me to philosophy of science (Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, et. al.)

And, I just purchased, Erich Fromm's Marx's Concept of Man: Including Economic and Philosophical Postscripts. 

Dallas Willard said we need more deep people. This requires a lifetime. I'm still learning.

The Jericho Walk (Guest post by Mariah Steinman)

This guest post is written by Mariah Steinman. 
Mariah is part of our Redeemer family. 
She blogs at Mountain Mover. 
You may contact Mariah at mariahsteinman@yahoo.com.

***

Since last week I’ve been reading about the Israelites, and their journey out of the desert and into their promised land.

This has been significant to me, since I feel as if I’ve been walking through my own desert, and I am on the verge of entering into what God has promised me.

For forty years these people wandered, lost in the desert, pressing forward through trial and tribulation to make it to their promised land.

Unfortunately, their journey came to a halt, because standing between the Israelites and their promise was a seventeen-foot-high impenetrable wall, the wall of Jericho.

What fascinates me most about this story is how they get past the wall. It wasn't by fighting. They didn't charge the wall and attack it with swords and spears. They marched around the wall, while praising God.

They continued this for seven days, and after doing what God had told them, when they gave a final shout, they watched as God brought down the wall, opening the way to their promised land.

As we go through life the large walls of depression, anxiety, divorce, losing a job, little to no income, and even death, pop up around us and appear to be impenetrable. Often these walls are accompanied by deep pain, suffering, and doubt. On top of this, you're being attacked on every side by heavy warfare.

The situation begins to feel hopeless. 

On the other side of this "wall" is everything we have been hoping for. everything we cried ourselves to sleep for, everything we screamed in pain for, and everything we have prayed and cried out to God for.

And now this giant, immovable wall is standing in your way, and there seems to be no way out.

Like the Israelites, there is nothing we can do on our own to bring it down. We beat it, punch it, kick it, and throw things at it, but nothing works. The only weapon we have is the word of God. 

The Israelites marched around their wall physically; we march around our walls in faith. We hold firm to what God has promised. We hold firm, even though our eyes cannot see it, and our brains cannot understand it.

Because when we let God in, when we give Him the glory, that causes the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down.

To us, the situation may seem hopeless, but to God, that is where He does His best work, in seemingly hopeless situations.

If you are like me, currently in the midst of facing a wall, and everything you’ve tried hasn’t worked, and you feel that the walls are closing in, don’t give up!

Because God is about to show up, and this is when He’ll do His best work!

Just like in the Chronicles of Narnia, when god shows up, the battle changes!

Keep praising Him despite the doubt, keep rejoicing despite the pain, and keep speaking to that wall, even if it doesn’t look like it’s moving.

It was by faith that Jericho fell, and it is by faith that your walls will fall as well.

Raise a hallelujah! Do the Jericho walk!

“Shout! For the Lord has given you this city!” – Joshua 6:16