He has gone before me

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           "As soon as you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the Levitical priests, then you shall set out from your place and follow it. yet there shall be a distance between you and it, about 2,000 cubits in length. Do not come near it, in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before."
-Joshua 3:3-4

I read this the other day in my devotions. I found it really really interesting. The Israelites found themselves before two barriers, first the Jordon river, a body of water before them and the promised land of God. Secondly a walled city named Jericho stood behind the Jordon river. The Israelites were tired, their leader Moses who had lead them out of Egypt and across the dessert had just recently died. Joshua, who Moses mentored now is called by YHWH God to step up as their leader.
Tired, scared, anxious, unprepared, and uneducated, Joshua thinks, "What am I going to do?!" God says something interesting He says this, "Take the box that my presence dwells upon, tell the men who I have chosen to lead you guys in worship of me to walk with it into the river. But don't go to near it, because if you go a head of it, you wont know where to go. Mainly because you have never been here before, but seeing as I am the Lord God, creator of all I know my way around. So follow me as I lead you guys through this river and this land."
And so Joshua makes it happen. Joshua doesn't think "But it's to hard"... he simply just does it, trusting whole completely in the fact that God has already gone before him and His people. Now is this easy? NOT AT ALL. You see Joshua first has to get up in front of everyone and say "Well we are going to simply walk through the river then see what happens after." What lies ahead of the Israelites is a long, hard, bloody, trusting journey, one that will be difficult, that will be terrifying, will be unknown, will be completely done in trust.
So here's the thing, where are you right now? are you in the sandals of the Israelites? looking at the Jordon river and wall of Jericho saying "Well we are screwed." Are you like Joshua, someone God is calling to step up and do something? Are you listening, trusting in the fact that God has gone before you and is with you? That He has your back? And do you know that although it will be hard, difficult, at some points terrifying, that all of it will be worth it? Because ultimately you will grow deeper, stride longer, and become stronger in Him then you ever did in the past?
Are you an Israelite
? or are you a Joshua?