Year 4, Day 196: Joshua 11

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Invitation, Challenge

• Invitation: God is always inviting us into relationship with Him. He desires that we know Him and we know His desires for us.
• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.

I am going to go a little outside of the box today.  Usually when we think about invitation and challenge we talk about people who are already in a positive relationship with one another.  I believe that is actually the proper context.  Invitation and challenge are best calibrated through the lens of relationship.

Certainly this chapter is not about relationship.  The Hebrew people and the northern kings are not in relationship with each other.  In fact, they are at war.

That’s actually my point.

Those northern kings are not in a position to even hear the invitation and challenge of God.  God would welcome relationship with them, but they are not in a place to hear the invitation.  God would teach them how to become His people, but they are not in a place to respond to the challenge.  They are by default closed to relationship with God.  That is why God has brought war to their doorstep.

It is next to impossible to speak invitation and challenge into people unless there is relationship to support the message.  For us, the lesson is indeed rather simple.  Our task is to put ourselves daily into the place where we can hear the invitation and challenge of God our Father.  We do not want to be like those Canaanite kings.

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