It's Not You
Hebrews 11:30
- Type
- Devotional
- Topic
- Faith & Trust
- Books
- Hebrews
- Written for
- Teens
- Notes
- 447 words
How you may use this
Use it as you wish. Adapt it, cut it, teach it. The personal stories are mine: either credit me for those or, better, tell your own. Most of the rest I gathered from other sources over the years, so I claim little original here. My one requirement — do not take this and teach it without further study.
The notes
It’s Not You
WND 201207.18
I love the movie “The Karate Kid.” It’s a classic. It’s about a kid, who, well, learns lots of life lessons while also learning karate.
In the movie, the kid named Daniel is excited because he’s just convinced Mr. Myagi to teach him karate. He goes in for his first lesson, and Mr. Myagi has him wash his car, wax it, and even paint a fence, but he shows him how he wants it done. “Wax on, wax off.” No karate whatsoever. Just work.
Daniel is frustrated. He pitches a fit and says that he never wanted to teach him karate, just to have him work. And then the moment of realization comes when Mr. Myagi asks him to show him the moves he’s been doing over the past few days. Wax on, wax off. Daniel didn’t know it, but he was creating those basic karate moves with muscle memory.
How often are you faced with something in life that doesn’t make sense? How often is an obstacle put in your way, or a trial put in your path that you just don’t understand?
The Children of Israel had this happen to them. In Joshua chapters 1, 2, & 6, we learn about the fall of the walls of Jericho.
Jericho was a small city of 10 acres but was packed with as many as 10,000 people. It’s estimated though that at least half of those were soldiers. Joshua, meanwhile, commanded 600,000 men. They could have very easily and without much loss overtaken the city of Jericho, despite its fortified double-wall structure.
But what did God do? Instead of telling them just to overtake them, God told them to march around the wall.
Why? Because maybe God wanted to work things out so that they knew it wasn’t them who did it.
God wants us work out things in our lives and see his power, to know who’s really in charge, and for us to know what it wasn’t us.
Joshua succeeded because he had faith and followed God. Hebrews chapter 11 says “by faith the walls came down.” Hebrews chapter 12 says that faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
We talk a lot about faith, but tonight, is it really a part of you? Does it really influence your decisions? Do you follow God even when it doesn’t make sense?
Tonight, have you lost that faith? You can reignite that tonight. Come forward, and we can pray for you. Or perhaps you’ve never given your life to God in baptism. That’s the first step.
Come tonight, while we stand and sing.
Near it on the shelf