Moving on!

When you start a new job or take up a new and challenging responsibility, one of the first things you always seem to need is initial words of encouragement to help you make a good start.

'Moses my servant is dead' (Joshua 1:2), was God's opening words to young Joshua as he began his task of leading the people of Israel.
Not the most encouraging word to initiate a young leader.

However, of course God knew just what he was doing.

When God takes you on into his promises and his purposes, we all need to be reminded that the past has gone, i.e. Moses is dead!
Why? Because we all have a tendency to want to stay in our past experiences.
The Israelites were no strangers to this kind of thinking.
When they were faced with challenge on their journey to the Land of Promises, they often looked back to the past experience of onions and garlics of Egypt, even though they would have eaten these foods as slaves.

Now they faced another challenge for a new day as they entered into the land that was before them.
It would have been easy for Joshua and the people to look back to Moses bringing 10 plagues against their enemy, or Moses lifting his staff and seeing the Red Sea part so they could cross, or Moses striking the rock and bringing forth water, or Moses going up the mountain to receive God's expressed instructions to this fledgling nation.

So God reminds them, 'Moses, my servant is dead'.

Now the Israelites were not the only ones who could tend to look back.
In the NT we have three of Jesus 'A' Team, Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration. They see Jesus reveal his glory on the mountain and immediately Peter wants to build a shelter. He wants to put up a structure around his experience.
Jesus, however, saw that what had happened was not to be kept as a past experience but was the springboard for the next thing God would have him do. He came down the mountain and exercised his authority over evil spirits that were destroying a young boy (Lk 9:28-43)

Let me encourage to move on from the comfort of what you know and take a step of faith that is wholly dependant of the God of the now.
Be encouraged by what God has done in the past i.e. 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with you'
But don't stay there. Step out, step up into God's promises for your life

Pastor Rae