Early in the morning Joshua and all the Israelites set out from Shittim and went to the Jordan, where they camped before crossing over. 2 After three days the officers went throughout the camp, 3 giving orders to the people: “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, who are Levites, carrying it, you are to move out from your positions and follow it. 4 Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before. But keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it.”
The Israelites were following God... literally. They kept following His presence, keeping a kilometer or so back for safety.
One of my old Lexington friends recommended a Joyce Meyer devotional using verse 3 as a starting point; she left off the laying-a-KM-back part, since the modern Christian doesn't have to worry about getting zapped by the Ark.
I'm not a big Meyer fan, but she's spot-on here. In uncharted terrain, we are working best when we're following God.
Note that the we aren't chasing God, we're following him; if we are chasing God, we somehow fell behind and have to catch up, so the old charsismatic classic The God Chasers is poorly-phrased advice since we shouldn't need to chase Him if we're doing our jobs as followers well.
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