Obedience To The Word of the Lord

“I have given you Jericho, it’s King, and all its strong warriors!” In the book of Joshua 6:1-2 we read that the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. The Lord had given Jericho into the hands of Joshua, and in the eyes of God, it had already been done. For Joshua, he was staring at walls at least 13 feet tall, with a watchtower some 28 feet tall. In the natural, Jericho was an impenetrable force set before them, that looked nearly impossible to conquer. For seven days the Israelites walked around the walls carrying the Ark of the Covenant. In the mind of Joshua, God said he had handed Jericho over to them, so this is what he stood on. The Lord gave him wisdom and counsel for the situation at hand.  

So many times in life the Lord asks us to do things and as we look at them with our natural eyes it looks impossible. In scripture we read that faith is the reality of things we hope for but have not yet seen. The reality wasn’t seeing the walls of Jericho already down, the reality was that God had said it and so it was done.

As an evangelist who travels around the world, I have been told countless times that it will be impossible to go into certain countries because of war, famine, disease, etc. I never have taken no for an answer because if the Lord tells me to go after the harvest in a certain area, you better believe no matter the circumstance, it will come to pass. I was once traveling to South Asia when the airspace was shut down due to extremism. I knew the Lord had told me I would go so I got a flight to Dubai, the layover point, and believed that God would make a way. As I stood in line for five hours, with hundreds of stranded foreigners trying to get home, I prayed in the spirit. I got up to the ticket counter after hours of waiting and the man in front of me started causing a scene because nobody could still get a ticket to this country. The man at the counter told me that the airspace was shut down and I would not get a flight, but I said, ‘sir please check again.’ He typed on his keyboard and sat a second, with a bewildered look on his face, he looked up and told me a flight had just opened that second. He gave me a ticket, for free, and I got into the country and preached Jesus. This is the God we serve!

For the Lord, obedience to what He asks is love. 2 John 1:6 says, “Love means doing what God has commanded us, and He has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning.” Obedience to His voice is better than sacrifice, whatever God has spoken to you throughout your life will come to pass when you obey! It truly is this simple, whatever you hear the Lord say, do it. We must be a people who don’t look at situations and the world with our natural eyes but with our eyes of faith.

Tune in to this episode of Awaken The Wonder for part one of our seven-part devotional series on obedience and love!