He is alive and he’s real. And so if you’re coming here this morning and and maybe you know I could see that maybe it was a struggle even for some of you to come this morning and yet I believe God wanted to meet with you right here. He wanted to encourage you from his word and that’s what the power of God’s word does for us. So Joshua chapter 3 is where we’re at. I feel the need to start that way.

Just sharing with you God’s heart for you that he he loves you. And whatever you’re going through right now, you you could be going through something that seems impossible seems impossible for you to overcome. But the God who met these people at the Jordan River, he is the same God who meets us right where we’re at. And he loves us and he carries us through those obstacles in life. He doesn’t abandon us.

He doesn’t leave us to to go through life alone. He walks with us by his spirit. You know, it’s very, I would say, providential that Vicki shared that scripture, Psalm 77. I was going to share that this morning as well because Pastor Steve gave me that scripture a couple weeks back. And so, I’ll just share it again.

This is a a powerful word for us today. Psalm 77:19, speaking of God, it says, “Your road led through the sea, your pathway through the mighty waters, a pathway no one knew was there.” So, we’re going to get right into it this morning. Here’s the big idea we’re going to see. If you consecrate yourself fully to the Lord, he promises to work wonders in and through you.

If you consecrate yourself fully to the Lord. So, Joshua 3 begins like this. Here’s verse one. Then Joshua rose early in the morning and they set out from Shhatim and they came to the Jordan. He and all the people of Israel and lodged there before they passed over.

Okay, so here’s the context for our passage this morning. 40 years before this, God had promised the land of Canaan to the people of Israel. He told them to go in and take the land. And they they went to the border. They saw how big the grapes were and how big the people were.

And they turned yellow and said, “No, we can’t do it.” You know, they they played the part of the coward. They looked at the size of the people and they didn’t look at the size of their god. And so, they turned back. But now, this is 40 years later.

They had been wandering in the desert for 40 years. Think of the the expectation, the buildup. We know what happened to our fathers. Many of these people would come there knowing what their fathers had done and how they had been cowardly. But the way God deals with us is he doesn’t look at us only through the lens of our parents.

He doesn’t say, you know, this is what your parents did, so therefore this is what you’re going to do. Every generation has the decision to make. What are we going to do in our generation? How are we going to live by faith in God? Are we going to just follow the patterns of those who went before us or are we going to step up and be acting in faith?

That’s what these people did here at the Jordan River. And so God calls this new generation to go forward and take the land, the promised land. They’re following Joshua’s lead and they’re ready for this promise to be fulfilled. They’re ready to go in and see all the abundance of the land God has given them. There’s just one problem.

The Jordan River lays in front of their path. They cannot get into the land unless they go over the river. And this is, as we’ll see, this is no small task. To bring over 1 million people, some people would estimate about 1.8 million people across the Jordan River.

Okay, that is three Portlands leading three Portlands across a mighty river and into a land where there are enemies waiting for them. But we know that God has no problem with the impossible. The tasks that we think are are utterly undoable, God says, “I can do that.” And God does do that each and every day. God never tries.

He always succeeds. God never attempts. He always accomplishes. He never grows or improves because he’s already infinitely good and powerful. And he’s about to show the people of Israel just how powerful he is.

It says in verse two of chapter 3, “At the end of the three days, the officers went through the camp and commanded the people,” 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 or half a mile. Do not come near it in order that you may know the way you shall go, for you have not passed this way before. Probably most Americans are familiar with the Ark of the Covenant thanks to Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, thank you Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, but because they depicted that Ark of the Covenant being the sought-after treasure, but here they had the ark of the covenant.

And this this arc which in many ways it it symbolized God’s presence in their midst. They could always look at this ark this it’s really just a small box about 3x two feet very small and it symbolized God going before them. And Joshua said the priests are to carry this ark of the covenant ahead of them. And I would say that really what the ark represents is Jesus. You you look at the box it on the one hand it doesn’t look all that impressive just a small box very humble like Jesus is humble and yet it was overlaid with gold pure gold reminding us of the deity and royalty of King Jesus inside it were three items Aaron’s staff which budded that represented God’s power with them and then there was the mana bread with it and that represented God’s provision and then there was the tablets of the ten commandments ments reminding them that God’s precepts were leading them.

Not only that, but on the day of atonement, what they would do is they would slaughter an animal and they would take the blood of that animal and sprinkle it. The high priest would sprinkle it on the ark of the covenant. And and that would represent all the sins of the people being cleansed or purged through the death of this substitute, pointing clearly to Jesus. And the officers told the people to let the let the priests carry the ark ahead of them. That they couldn’t come within a half mile of the ark.

Now, part of that could be for visibility reasons. Everybody, the 1.8 million people had to see where they were going. They needed to see that ark ahead of them. But I think there’s also the symbolism of God’s holiness.

God is holy. And you know, God’s holiness, especially in the Old Testament, it’s very clear. You can’t just walt into God’s presence covered in sin. Something has to be done with that guilt, with that sin that we’re all covered in. And the blood of Jesus is what brings us into the presence of God.

That’s why when Jesus died on the cross, the the veil in the temple was torn in half. God. It was torn from top to bottom because God himself was proving to everyone that there was a way in now to his holy presence through trusting in Jesus. And so the ark went ahead of them. And that was also God’s way of saying, “I am leading you.

I’m with you. I am your vanguard. I’m taking you to the land I have for you. I’m not sending you off on your own. I’m going to be in your midst.”

As Christians, we understand that God draws near to us in love. He did that in Jesus. But we also see that we’re to have a healthy reverence for God. You know, this this arc being way out ahead of them. This this sense of distance and yet nearness.

This combination was how we’re to think about God. We’re to have a a healthy fear of God. The Bible says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. We’re to see him as the holy and righteous and pure, spotless, no sin whatsoever in his character. He is completely flawless in every way.

That is our God. And yet at the same time, he’s a God who draws near in mercy. And he he brings us close because of the blood of Jesus washing our sins away. We can come near to this God of blinding holiness. This is what it says in verse 5.

Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” I love that statement. The Lord will do wonders among you. So, what does it mean to consecrate yourself? And why does Joshua tell them to do this now?

Now, before they go into the promised land, you’re to consecrate yourself. Well, to consecrate yourself is to set yourself apart for God’s work in your life. It’s to offer up your whole being, your your heart, your soul, your mind, your body, and say, “I’m yours, God. I’m yours. I’m here for you.

I belong to you and I’m committed to you. Whatever you want to do with me, it’s all on the altar. So, here’s the first question I want you to consider this morning. Are you holding anything back from wholesale commitment to Jesus? The encouragement is to set yourself apart to the lordship of Jesus.

One thing we learn from Joshua is that God is able to do wonders beyond our imagination. He can bring down walls that look like impassible fortresses. He can bring people across rivers that seem uncrossable. He can make the sun stand still in the sky. That’s all that God can do.

And more. And yet he says, “Before you reach for these blessings, all these things I want to give you in the promised land, I first want you to consecrate yourself. To give yourself fully to me, to not hold anything back, to not say, God, you can have this part of my life, but not this.” Or or you can have my, you know, you can have my possessions over here, but not these possessions. God wants everything.

He wants most importantly our heart. According to the gospel, God saves us by sheer grace. That means there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s acceptance and approval. There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love. He already loves us to the nth degree.

But what he does is he calls us to surrender ourselves to him. And then he fills us with his spirit so that we can carry out the works he’s prepared for us to do. In 2 Timothy 2, Paul uses this great illustration of vessels or dishes. He says, “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.”

So, here’s the idea. If you were to go to a fancy wedding and go to maybe a nice big ballroom and you sit down and you’re having your meal, you would expect there to be some nice dishes, right? Maybe some some china, fine china and a glass goblet for you to have your food. And so if they were to bring out plastic cups and plates that look like they hadn’t been clean since yesterday’s lunch, you’d be a little bit appalled, right? And this is what God is saying.

He’s saying, “I want to use clean dishes for honorable use.” What does that mean? It means he wants us to forsake our old way of life. The the way of life that is that the world marks that life. The way of life that is according to the flesh.

The way of the life, the way of life that is who we used to be before we knew knew Jesus. He says, “Give that all up. Surrender it all and and come to me and I will use you in mighty ways.” You need to be a clean dish. Ultimately, only the blood of Jesus can cleanse us from our old way of life.

But we’re still called to walk in that newness of life, to step forward in faith. So if you’re living a new life today, if you’re not the person you once were, that’s because Jesus set you free. It’s not because you did enough religion. It’s not because you followed enough rituals or you, you know, did this special spiritual pilgrimage where you accomplished great things and then God looked at you. No, it’s because God came after you in Jesus.

He pursued you. He loved you first. And it’s because of his death on the cross that now you’re welcomed into his presence. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6 that the kingdom of God is is marked by righteousness. So, we’re to give up our old way of life.

All the the lust, the idolatry, the greed, the drunkenness. That’s not who we are anymore. After listing these various sins, Paul says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified.”

That’s another way of saying, “You were consecrated. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.” You know, sometimes we wonder why God isn’t changing our circumstances in life. But the question is, are we willing to change? When God calls us to give something up, are we giving that up?

I think of the Burmese monkey trap. Maybe you’ve heard of this before. The natives when they wanted to catch a monkey, they would take a coconut and they would carve out a a small hole, just small enough for the monkey to slip his hand in. And they would put a little piece of fruit inside. And they knew that if that monkey gets his hand and he gets hold of something, he’s not letting go.

That’s the nature of a monkey, right? And and when it has that clenched fist, it could not pull its hand out of the coconut. And in many ways, that’s a picture of us when we have something we hold on to that gets in the way of our relationship with Jesus that that holds us back from growing spiritually. And God is saying, “You need to let that go.” whatever it is, whatever the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart, he’s saying, “Let it go because it’s getting in the way of your relationship with me.”

So, that’s a question we can all consider. Is there something that I’m holding on to that’s holding me back from embracing Jesus? So, to consecrate yourself is to to let go of all of that stuff that gets in the way. It’s to put everything over to Jesus, give it all to him, and let him lead. What most people don’t realize is that to give yourself fully to Jesus is when you finally start to experience true freedom.

What we tend to think, and this is the message of of the world, and this is the message of the devil, actually, that as long as we don’t have anyone we’re answering to, we’re free. We’re free. We just answer to ourselves. But the problem is the Bible says because of sin, it’s actually an enslavement. We’re enslaved to various desires and lusts and these spiritual powers of darkness.

And what we don’t realize is even though we’re claiming freedom, look how free I am. I can do whatever I want. We’re actually playing the part of a slave. We’re in bondage as long as we are rejecting Jesus and the freedom he offers. So Jesus calls for wholehearted commitment.

And he will promise us the freedom that comes through his spirit. And so Joshua said, ‘Whatever matters or sorry, what matters first is that you consecrate yourself first to me. You know, you can’t go into this land expecting all these blessings. You first need to consecrate yourself to the Lord. And then the people were, I’m sure, excited and anxious to move forward.

They’re ready. They’ve been waiting 40 years. But sometimes God wants us to slow down and consider where are you at with me? I know you want to go ahead. You want to do all these things and and there’s so many things you can be busy about all your life and yet are you slowing down to make sure you’ve made short accounts with me that you’ve first come to me and and sought me in your pursuits in life.

So after consecrating themselves, they come to the Jordan River. The Jordan River is a well-known river in the Bible. Comes up a lot. Many pivotal events happen at the Jordan River. You have the the seven times that non dipped in the Jordan River to be cleansed of leprosy.

John the Baptist baptized crowds and crowds of people at the Jordan River. In fact, he even baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. But today, if you were to go to the Jordan River, you would see a not so impressive river. See, what’s happened is they have set up irrigation systems that have piped a lot of water out of the Jordan River. And so if you were to go there today, you would think you could just easily cross this thing.

But back at this time, the river was much larger. It was a raging river. One source says that today the Jordan River is only 3% the volume it was 100 years ago. So that gives you a sense of just how massive this river was. Think more like the Colombia River than you know the Twolitan River.

This is a massive river. And it says in verse 15, not only that, but this was at harvest time. So this is when the banks were overflowing. This is this is flood season. This is the worst time, humanly speaking.

This is the worst time to cross the Jordan River. Now, if you’re one of those Israelites coming to the Jordan River, you’d no doubt wonder, how is this going to work? God is leading us to this river. We have this promised land given for us, but how do we cross this? You know, the engineers would start to think, okay, how do we build a bridge across this thing or that maybe you’re a athletic person, you’d think, okay, I could swim across this.

No, no, you can’t swim across. That’s not practical. Other people would think, well, maybe we could put a raft together and we could just ferry people across. Again, three Portlands, it’s not practical to do all that. They got to a point where there was nothing they could do, humanly speaking.

So, think of the Jordan River as your greatest obstacle in life. Whatever it is that gives you anxiety, whatever it is that feels overwhelming, that feels like this obstacle you’re up against, this impossible thing that’s confronting you, that’s the Jordan River. Again, think of Psalm 77. God has made a pathway through the mighty waters, a pathway no one knew was there. This wasn’t something that they were foreseeing.

We’ve read we’ve read this passage maybe in the Bible before. We know what happens. They had no clue. They didn’t see this coming. They did not know.

And so the second question I want you to consider is what obstacle are you up against today? The encouragement is to boldly take the next step of faith. God doesn’t tell us how we’ll go through every challenge. He doesn’t tell us in advance how everything’s going to be worked out in life. We see the challenges and we we see how forboding things are, but he doesn’t give us all the details ahead of time and say, “This is how everything’s going to work out.”

He calls us to trust him. Whether it’s a health challenge, financial challenge, maybe a difficult relationship where you’ve been hurt, God doesn’t tell us all the hows, but he tells us to trust him. Sometimes we think we have it all worked out in our head where God just needs to get on board with our plans, right? We know how this would work, God. We We have this great idea.

But more often, God comes along and he says, “Your plan is not my plan. I’ve got a better plan, and you need to trust me.” But he promises he’ll be with us if we take the next step of faith. Whatever that is, he will make a way forward. In this case, something utterly miraculous happened.

God told Joshua in verse 8, “Give this command to the priests who carry the ark of the covenant. When you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop there.” So Joshua did that. The people were probably discouraged. They see this raging river.

This looks like something that’s impossible to cross. The banks are overflowing. And Joshua says this, verse 10, “Here is how you shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Gegosites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is passing over before you into the Jordan.” Joshua says, “You’re going to need to see this moment.”

See, God is setting us up. He needs us to be at this point where we don’t know what to do, where we have to trust him. That the river had to be at flood stage at this time. It had to be the worst time to cross because God is going to show he is among us. Verse 12, the priests will carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth.

As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream and the river will stand up like a wall. So just imagine this. Those priests are carrying the ark of God, this sacred item that they’re carrying into the the river. There’s this raging river right in front of them at flood season. And it says they literally have to take a step of faith.

They have to step into the water. They have to get their feet wet and then the river will stop. This is what God calls you to do. He doesn’t always part the river first, so to speak. Oftentimes, he will tell you to step into that river.

Get the feet wet. Take that step of faith and then you’ll see that the path is cleared. But you have to take that step of faith first. And God will do this because he wants to grow us. He tests our faith just like he did with Abraham.

He told Abraham to offer his only son, Isaac. And we think that’s that’s terrible to offer your own son. How could he ask that of Abraham? It was a test. It was to show a picture of the gospel.

In fact, he’ll tell us to walk forward trusting him to make a way. Biblical faith is sometimes caricatured as this passive feeling like it’s it’s something where we just we feel good inside and that’s it. But biblical faith in reality is active. It moves forward. It takes that next step even with all the obstacles in life.

It says, “I’m going to trust God. I don’t see how this is going to work out. This doesn’t even make sense to me, but by faith, I am going to keep walking forward. I’m going to step into that river. I’m going to get my feet wet because I believe he’s going to make a way.”

Jesus doesn’t save you so that you can sit on the bench. He saves you and he puts the jersey of his righteousness on you and he says now it’s your time to get in the game. You’re up. And Jesus never promised an easy life. In fact, he said, “In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.” So, the priests had a choice to make. Were they going to sit there and complain, “God, this isn’t fair. Why Why are you leading us to this raging river? This is the worst time of the year to do this.

They could have played the the victim card, but Jesus calls us to claim our victory in him. One of the best chapters on claiming our victory in Jesus is Romans chapter 8. I’d encourage you all to to read that this week. Romans chapter 8, especially the end of the chapter, the Apostle Paul is sharing how he gets through all these challenges in the fight of faith. And you got to think Paul, he went through so much.

He was imprisoned. He was beaten. He was persecuted. He was stoned and shipwrecked. All for the name of Jesus.

But in Romans 8, he says this in verse 18. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. How can he say that? He’s saying if you put all my suffering and life on one end of the scale and the glory that God has promised me in Jesus Christ, this glory far outweighs whatever light momentary affliction we have today. He says in verse 31, “If God is for us, who could be against us?”

Well, what about Satan? He’s against us, isn’t he? Well, yes, but the point is if God is for you, then no enemy can win. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword or whatever you want to fill in the blank right there.

Whatever is your obstacle in life, is that going to separate us from the love of Christ? Is there anything in life, any obstacle big enough, any attack from the enemy that is big enough to separate me from Jesus and his love for me? Here’s the answer. No. Despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow, nor even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below. Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Joshua knew he could tell those priests to walk forward because he knew the God who gave that command. He knew that God makes a way. If he tells you to walk into that river, it will open up. There will be a path forward. The God who leads you to the river isn’t going to leave you to drown.

And when you’re living that consecrated life, you get to see God do wonders. You get to be a part of amazing things because you’ve given yourself fully to him. And so you get to experience more and more of his love and his power and his joy. God leads us to these points in life where we’re ready to throw up our hands and say, “I have no answers here. I have no good resolutions.

In my mind, there’s no way to get through this.” He does that. He brings us to the banks of the flooding Jordan River because he wants us to get our feet wet. He wants us to step forward in faith. Think of all the amazing examples from scripture.

Why in the world did God allow those Persian lawmakers to outlaw prayer to God? He did it because he wanted Daniel, to have that opportunity to keep praying in faith no matter what might come. Why did God allow a guy like Hmon to put all the Jews in danger? He did it because he wanted to give Esther that opportunity, that that special time she had been given to risk her life to go to the king to plead for the lives of her people. I think of Peter, you know, why is it that there was that massive storm on the sea?

Why why did Jesus walk out to them like that on the waves? Well, certainly to show his power, but wasn’t it also to give Peter that opportunity to walk on the water, to step in faith? Or think of the bleeding woman who touched Jesus’s robe? You know, you could ask yourself, why in the world did God allow this woman to go through all that trouble, go see all those doctors, nobody could help her. She had thrown up her hands and said, “Nobody could help me.”

And yet, there’s Jesus. And because she took that courageous step, she went after and and grabbed hold of the robe of Jesus. That was a courageous move, by the way, to do that. With all the people watching, she grabbed hold of Jesus’s robe. And because she did that, she was healed.

At various times, God leads us to the Jordan River at flood stage because he wants us to step forward in faith, to get our feet wet. One of my favorite examples in recent history is the story of a guy named Brother Andrew, known as Brother Andrew. As a young Dutchman, Andrew Vanderbil was called to share Christ with communists. And so because he was transformed through reading the Bible, he wanted to bring the Bible to people who didn’t have access to God’s word. And he knew that in Yugoslavia beyond beyond the the iron curtain it was forbidden to bring any gospel pamphlets or Bibles or anything like that.

And so he went to the border knowing that he could be stopped and there were two guards at the at the border and they they asked to look in his trunk and he had boxes full of Bibles full of gospel pamphlets. And so he prayed in that moment. He said, “God, I know from your word that you have made blind eyes to see, and I’m asking that you make seeing eyes blind in this case.” And amazingly, even though they had this this brief time together, they let him through. In that situation, Andrew knew God was leading him to cross the Iron Curtain.

Just like those Israelites were led to cross the Jordan River, he simply had to trust God would make a way. And he did. Now, some of you might be thinking, “But what about those times when we’re called to step out in faith and it doesn’t seem like there’s a blessing that follows?” Aren’t there examples in the Bible? I mean, there’s guys like John the Baptist.

He confronted Herod over his sin and he got beheaded. And what about Stephen? He was boldly stepping out in faith, proclaiming the gospel. And well, he got stoned to death. For many saints, their final step of faith was giving their lives for the spread of the gospel.

But for them, they didn’t miss out on the blessings. In fact, they received them right away. They they still they’re not the exceptions to the rule. They still received the blessings. They got to be in the presence of Jesus right away.

They got to experience the goodness of their reward immediately. See, nothing we do in life is overlooked by God. You some things it feels like nobody would care, nobody would notice, and the world may overlook it, but if you’re doing it for the kingdom, if you’re doing it for God, he notices. Joshua had all the people cross the mighty Jordan on dry land and he had the priest stand in the middle of the riverbed so that everyone would understand this is because God is in our midst. He’s the one parting these waters.

He’s the one who has stopped the river upstream. And then all the people crossed over just like 40 years before they’d crossed the Red Sea. There was a new exodus into the promised land. I imagine what it would be like to be a little kid experiencing that. That would be emlazed on your memory.

You know, to think God held back the water so that I could cross over. And the only reason that we’re over here today is because God worked that miracle. But one of the pitfalls of being fallen human beings is that we’re prone to forgetfulness. And the Bible talks about this quite a bit that you know Israel as a nation there was times where it says they forgot God and they turned to idols and they turned to other things to satisfy their hearts. This forgetting of God is something we can all struggle with.

And it’s part of spiritual warfare to remember what God has done. The devil loves to draw our minds away from God and what he’s done in our lives. He loves for us to fixate on the things that have gone wrong and not on the things that God has done. And so part of the battle is to remember. To remember.

And this is what Joshua does. He tells one man from every tribe of Israel to grab a large stone from the riverbed. And he he has them carry it all the way to Gilgal, which is their base of operations. It’s where the rest of the conquest is going to happen. And he says, “Set up these stones and and build this monument.

It’s going to symbolize what God has done for us. It’s going to be a reminder. Every time you walk past this monument, you’re going to remember that God is for you. He parted the waters. He hasn’t left us.

He’s a God who’s with his people.” In the book of second Peter, Peter begins by basically saying, you know, I’m at the end of my life and and I I’ve already told you the truth. You’ve lived in the truth, but I feel compelled to stir you up by way of reminder. And he says, you may have heard of all these things before. You may have heard the gospel.

You maybe know that Jesus loves you. You maybe know what he did for you, but you need to be reminded. And so he dedicates that last letter to reminding them of what they already know. Just like when you go to Washington DC, you have all these monuments, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial. They’re there to remind us of what these men did in the history of our country.

And these 12 stones were stacked together to serve as a monument for the people of Israel, that God is with them. So here’s the question, final question for you. How are you reminding yourself of God’s love and be encouraged to remind others of God’s unfailing love? There’s many ways you can be doing this, but you know, I think one of the best ways to think about this is what are some ways that God has just in the recent past shown his love to you? I like to do this where I I get out my prayer journal and I will just start recounting all the evidences of God’s love for me.

I don’t need to, you know, think back hard really. It’s there’s so many examples all through my life and I can just think about what happened in the last week or the last month and just write those out and get thinking about it and focus on those. Look at the ways God has loved you and go back to those monuments, so to speak. Remember what God has done in and through you. We all have this tendency toward what Paul Trip calls spiritual amnesia.

We forget all that Jesus has done for us. Now many people they think that they’ve already given Jesus a try. They’ve already gone through all the steps and in reality they gave their lives to rules and religion and regulations. They didn’t give their lives to Jesus. And so their experience might be, well, Jesus, he’s he doesn’t he’s a nice religious figure, but I can’t think of all the ways he’s loved me.

And the reality is they haven’t known Jesus. They haven’t experienced his love firsthand. And that’s why we’re called to give our lives to him first and foremost, to trust in him. And as we do that, and we walk forward in faith, we get to see him at work. We get to experience more and more of his goodness.

And Joshua says that part of the reason for setting up the stone monument is to teach your children. Which reminds us that in each generation, we’re called to pass on the faith to the next generation, to teach our children the gospel. Every generation needs to hear it aresh. Every generation needs to know the truth. And in just a moment, we’re going to be practicing a a form of remembering what Je

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