COMMUNICATING WELL

Today’s Reading: Joshua 3-4

Click scripture link to read online or HERE to listen online (then click the symbol of the audio speaker above the scripture portion on the right-hand side).

Just east of Jericho, looking across the Jordan River into the country of Jordan, you can see a church that commemorates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This is also the area where the Children of Israel crossed into the Promised Land.

GOOGLE MAPS – To see where the photo was taken, click HERE.

Key Verse: Joshua 4:24

…that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.

God has often intervened in human history to use so-called “acts of God” to accomplish His purposes. In the case of the Jordan River being dammed up at Adam (there is a bridge here today called “The Adam Bridge”), God may have used an earthquake. In 1927 there was a quake in this very area. A 150-foot rise on the West Bank was dislodged, completely blocking the flow of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea for 21 hours.

The leadership of Joshua, born a slave in Egypt, was not questioned from this time forward. Moses, raised in Pharaoh’s palace, saw the potential of Joshua and mentored him well. The written Word and the verbal telling of God’s stories, along with the pile of stones, succeeded in keeping the people faithful for at least one generation. Let us remember that we must creatively renew our means of communicating God’s message in every generation.

PRAYER FOR TODAY:

Lord God, please enable me to communicate well to those for whom I am directly responsible. May I be faithful to point as many people as possible to You by the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen!

100 PERSONAL WORDS:

As a boy, I would often look at the photo album from my parents’ honeymoon in 1924 in what was then known as Palestine. They were in old-fashioned bathing suits swimming in the Jordan (see photo below) at approximately the place where the Children of Israel crossed over. I’ve visited that place several times. As a great-grandfather of 13, a grandfather of 16, and a father of 4, I must do everything I can do to remind those whose lives I can influence of the faithfulness of God in the past, present, and future.

Yours for communicating our God stories to the next generations,

David

P.S. Below is a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls from the book of Joshua. For more about the Dead Sea Scrolls, click.here The second photo below is

Found among the Dead Sea Scrolls were fragments, like the one pictured here, which retold various stories from the book of Joshua.

My parents on their honeymoon in 1924, bathing in the Jordan River.