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Get Ready
Joshua 3
1 Joshua started early the next morning and left the Acacia Grove with all the Israelites. They went as far as the Jordan and stayed there before crossing. 2 After three days the officers went through the camp 3 and commanded the people, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God carried by the Levitical priests, you are to break camp and follow it. 4 But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between yourselves and the ark. Don’t go near it, so that you can see the way to go, for you haven’t traveled this way before.”
5 Joshua told the people, “Consecrate yourselves, because the Lord will do wonders among you tomorrow.”
How you prepare will often dictate how well you do
- Elite athletes often have unique rituals that get their head in the right place
God’s people are about to cross over the Jordan River for the first time after leaving Egypt 40 years earlier
Consecration – The setting apart of a person, thing, or place as sacred.
Joshua tells the people to “Set Themselves Apart”
- To get ready by setting themselves apart for God’s purpose
This happened by worship and Abstaining
- The people would set aside extra time and energy worshiping God
- An abstaining from anything that would distract them from God
God not looking to make everything easy, but to make us HOLY
When we are following God, we too must “set ourselves apart”
Paul talks about it in this way in his letter to the Roman church
Romans 12 (Message Translation)
1-2 So here’s what I want you to do: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
When God gets ready to move us, he will often require a season for us to get ready
- A Season of Holy Discontentment
- When our spirit is not satisfied in where we are
- Feeling the tugging of the Holy Spirit on our heart
When that happens, God is getting you ready to “CROSS OVER” into a new place
- To cross over your Jordan
- A step closer to your promise
He is calling you to “SET YOURSELF APART”
- To consecrate your life, will, and heart to His purpose
It is often uncomfortable and difficult in this season
- Requires you to do things that you may not normally do
May require you to:
- Set aside much more time for prayer
- To fast for a period of time
- To seek counsel from a mature Christ Follower
Consecration displays our true Character
- When we are busy, we don’t stop long enough to realize what we are doing, much less why we are doing it…
When we begin to set aside our life in a season of “Consecration” we discover the areas of our life we have refused to give over
There are 3 ways Consecration effects and displays our Character
- Focus, Purpose, Desires
Focus – What you do
Motives – Why you do what you do
Desires -What you wish you could do
Focus
Colossians 3:2
2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Proverbs 4:25
25 Let your eyes look forward; fix your gaze straight ahead.
Matthew 6:33
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.
Motives:
Proverbs 21:2
All a person’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs hearts.
Galatians 1:10
10 For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Philippians 2:3
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.
Matthew 6:1
1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven.
Desires:
Ephesians 4:22-24
22 Take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, 23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
Romans 13:13-14
13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Psalm 37:4-6
4 Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.
5 Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act, 6 making your righteousness shine like the dawn,
your justice like the noonday.
Your character will either bless you or be a curse on you
- You cannot outrun your character
When God brings you to a time of Consecration, to set yourself apart for his Purpose, Don’t run from it, run to it!
- Press into those moments of holy discontentedness and seek after the Lord
Be willing for your life to a living sacrifice