By this you shall know that the LIVING GOD is among you… (Joshua 3:10)
The waters of the flood-stage, overflowing-the-banks Jordan River fled away so the children of Israel could walk across a dry riverbed! That is how they would know the LIVING GOD was among them!
In the 3400 years since, we have no record of this ever having happened again. Or of the Red Sea parting. Or of water flowing from a spoken-to rock. Or of the sun standing still. Interestingly, the Lord doesn’t often seem to recycle His miracles.
But…! God is still very much in the business of letting people know that “the LIVING GOD is among you.”
In fact, I am confident there are arresting instances in your life where He made it plain to you that “the LIVING GOD is among you.” Did you survive one of those I-should-have-been-dead accidents? Did provision materialize seemingly out of nowhere? Did an impossibly-closed door open? Did some sentence or phrase from the Word of God light up your heart in such a way that you knew God was speaking directly to you?
What instance was it when you just knew this was a God-thing? That GOD had intervened or spoken?
Have you revisited that instance lately? God carefully scripted that tailor-made-for-you intervention so you would have an unmistakable sense that “the LIVING GOD is among you.” And He doesn’t intend for that moment to fade from your consciousness. For by THIS you shall know that the Living God is among you…! If you didn’t “set up 12 stones” then, you should now.
But wait! Don’t just live in the past. God is continually inserting Himself into our lives in such a way that we will plainly see that “the LIVING GOD is among us.” Are you alert to those arresting moments? Setting up 12 stones when He does? Praising Him? Telling others what He did? Taking these as encouragements? As strength for the difficulties of life? As assurances amid the onslaught from the enemy?
Maybe you should start a “By this you shall know…” journal. Because we remember the things we should forget and forget the things we should remember!
Press on, friends!