Courage

I'm reading Joshua right now because Jimmy has been preaching on it for a few weeks. I love the idea of doing something that God tells you to do that causes everyone else to question your sanity. Don't you think that when Joshua was telling the people to march around the walls, blow the trumpets, carry the ark of God, cross the Jordan, that people were shaking their heads and wondering what Joshua was smoking.
Seriously, when people watch Christ followers doing what God has told us to do, they probably think the same thing. You give how much to the church? You go to church every week? You read your Bible every day? You're making food for someone from in your class who is sick? You listen to positive, encouraging KLOVE all the time? You spend quiet time with God every morning before you go to work? That's not all necessary; you can get to heaven without doing all of those things, right? Right, but I need those things. I have found that I need positive, encouraging reading material and music. I need church every week. I need quiet time. I need the people in my Sunday school class. It won't get me to a higher place in heaven, but it will make my days here on this earth better than they would have been without all these things and people.
The thing is these things are just as foreign to some people as marching around the walls of the city every day for seven days. Why would you do something so absurd? It has taken me many years to understand exactly why I do the things I do. I do them because they make me feel good. Reading the Old Testament isn't always my favorite thing--too many wars, too much destruction, too many sad stories, but I can see God working in the lives of his people, so I feel a connection to people who lived thousands of years before me. They had struggles; they sinned; they failed; they grumbled, but ultimately they followed God. I have struggles, I sin, I fail, I grumble, but ultimately I follow God. All of the hoops I jump through (according to some people) are for me; they are not for God. He is God; he doesn't need me to do these things, but he wants me to.