Testimony

 This week's verse is Joshua 5:1:

When all the Amorite kings on the west side of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the seacoast heard how the Lord had dried up the water of the Jordan before the Israelites while they crossed, they lost their courage and could not even breathe for fear of the Israelites.

 These verses are from when the Israelites went to claim the land they were promised. It shows the powerful effect that can come from witnessing God's miracles. When God dried up the Jordan for the Israelites, it was a reminder of when he had dried up the Red Sea for them to cross. It was not just a helpful gesture to make crossing easier, but a kind of inside joke and personal greeting.

We sometimes recognize that in miracles God does in our lives. We see it helps us, and we like the intimacy of how he so precisely met our needs, oftentimes in a way that is very tailor-fit to our experiences and circumstances. But in these verses we see how it can go further than that, if we let it.

When God dried up the Jordan for the Israelites to cross, some of the people who experienced it must have talked about it. Maybe there were local bystanders who wondered how so many people could have gotten there so quickly. The important thing is that someone told the story and it went bronze-age viral. Kings were hyperventilating into brown paper bags when they heard the news.

When God does something amazing in our lives, we should not keep it to ourselves. The news of what happened could travel beyond our reach and affect the conversations we have with people in the future. For the Israelites, the kings were warned of God's power and had the proper fear and respect for him and the people he was helping. For us, it may be that people are willing to become Christians based on the experience they've seen us live out.

Next time God does a miracle in your life, look beyond yourself and consider that your testimony could be a key part of someone's encounter with God, or at very least could change the attitude that our society has towards Christianity.