Lesson 2.7 God is Strength: Entering the Promised Land

Getting Ready for January 12, 2014

Christmas is over, and it's time to face the New Year.  I'm putting the advent calendar away now.

Are there things that you are planning to do differently this year?  Tell me about them.

Let me mention that there is a glitch in the journals, which list this lesson and the next one for January 19.  Sorry about that.

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     Hebrews 12:11

"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

There are many sorts of "disciplines".  When a parent corrects their child, putting him or her in time out, or scolding them, that is discipline.  If it made you feel good, it wouldn't work very well to teach you not to do things you shouldn't be doing.

But there are other kinds of discipline too.

It is discipline when an athlete trains to play at his or her very best.

It is discipline when you learn to play a musical instrument and have to practice every day.

It is discipline when you learn to make your bed every morning when you get up, or even to brush your teeth.

It is discipline when you learn to do chores around the house.

It is discipline when someone says "No thankyou" to something they would very much like to eat, because they are trying to lose weight.

When we begin making any of these things a habit, it is NO FUN!  It is painful because it means doing something we may not want to do, at a time when we just don't feel like it.  Even if it is discipline in order to learn to do something we love, there is a lot of hard work involved and there are times when we don't want to do it, when doing it is painful for us.

We do these things (or our parents make us do them) because we know that it will work to make us better people in the long run.  Doing just about anything that we don't want to makes us better able to go against our selfish wills later on.  We or our parents can pick what things we want to concentrate on, whether it's doing homework, or memorizing Bible verses, or reading the Bible each day and praying. We can also trust that God is disciplining us to make us better when we go through hard times in our lives.  It's not that God is punishing us, but He does work to make us stronger.  The discipline produces a harvest in our lives--that means that something good comes from the discipline.  The harvest is righteousness and peace, and it comes to those who let themselves be trained by discipline.

     Joshua 1:9

I think that there is one difference between the words of this song and the version of the verse that we are working on memorizing.  They sing 'Do not be terrified" and we are trying to learn it as "Do not be afraid."

   James 1:22

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When God told the people to enter the promised land, the River Jordan was at flood stage.

God told Joshua to have the ark carried into the river.

While the ark was in the river, the people were able to cross through on dry land.  

God told Joshua to have the people carry one rock to represent each tribe out of the  river bottom so that they would always rmember what God had done for them.