It’s been a while since my last post. I had the wonderful opportunity to substitute teach at the school that I formerly taught at. It was a blessing to be with young people once again and to get to know them individually. However, It did cause me to get behind in a lot of other areas of my life. On one particular day, I read one of the most amazing passages in Joshua with one of the most amazing promises.
Joshua 3:5 says, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.” There are two key words in this passage – “consecrate” and “amazing”. I wondered, what does it mean to consecrate yourselves? I did a word search in the Hebrew text and it means to sanctify, to purify, to make oneself clean. The Hebrew verb captures the element of being pure or devoted to God. It means being set aside for use in the worship of God. One must be withheld from ordinary or secular use and treated with special care as something which belongs to God. To consecrate myself means to separate from the temptations of this world, not necessarily physically but by my choices.
This passage in Joshua challenged the Israelites to consecrate themselves because God was going to do amazing things among them. In the Hebrew text, the word for amazing is described as extraordinary, wonderful, remarkable, astonishing and its basic meaning is “to cause a wonderful thing to happen.”
As I read this, I got excited. If God is the same yesterday, today and forever than perhaps if I live a life of consecration then I can see God do amazing things among me. I so badly want to not live just an average life, living for myself. I want my mind and heart to be fully dedicated to God so that I can live the life that He designed from the beginning of time.
