Faith, Inheritance, and God’s Promises Fulfilled: Joshua

This is not a gig for me. This is not a vocation to me. I believe this more than I've ever believed it in my whole life. And I see it. But you can't tell me we don't have a good God who orders our steps and whose will for us is to shepherd us toward hope and toward a future because He's done it in my life time after time. And I wasn't a Joshua when I wasn't faithful. And I wasn't hidden with Him. Instead, I was out posing on platforms because I was insecure, and He still has given me promised land. That's where I have an inner Caleb. It's because of what He's redeemed me from. Hey, hey, back porchers. My name is Allison Allen. I'm the 5'12 spiritual wingwoman to Lisa Harper. for Lisa Harper's Back Porch Theology. She hates it when I do that. And we are so glad that you are with us. Before we jump into the book that we're going to be talking about today, we just want to remind you that we love to connect with you. We love to hear from you. We've got an Instagram handle, so check out Back Porch Theology Podcast there. Let us know your prayer request. We really do pray for those, and we just want you to know that you're always welcome at the table here on the porch. It's Back Porch the Elegy podcast. What is it? Podcast. Yeah. But I just got highly amused and I have to teach you. What? What'd I do? I'm scared. No, I love you so much. What? You said Instagram, Instagram handle. Is that old school? It makes it feel like we're on a CB. Breaker 1-9. Breaker 1-9? And I thought it might be called Instagram handle, but doesn't that make you think you're smoking the beer? It does. It does. Did your dad have one of those? My dad did. Oh, my heavens yes. Oh yes. And they'd speed and look out for the troopers and all the things. I dated a guy who gave me a CB not that long ago. Stop it. Yeah. We're no longer dating but I still have this. Did you ever use it? Did you ever set it up? I couldn't figure out how to do it. I'm so tech challenged and I'm so used to talking that if you have to press to talk I'm like I should be able to talk anytime when I have to press a button. That's right. It's not good for a logophile. Bluetooth was a wonderful development for you. I like our Instagram handle. Okay, well, listen, our little divergence here is actually apropos because we're going to be talking about traveling and moving. Look at you in a segue, baby. Traveling and kind of moving into the land. We're going to talk about Joshua. I love Joshua. And we've been in this wonderful series. I think it's been wonderful from my heart. No wasted words, hiking through the entirety of the Scripture, and I've just loved it. I love that we've kind of jumped. And we talked about jumping from Redemptive Lilypad to Redemptive Lilypad. Yeah, I love that. Because obviously doing 66 books in 52 weeks is— It's a lot. Especially for talkers. Yeah. There's just no way. Right. And I feel like there's more territory we don't cover than the Redemptive Highlights. But I've loved that we've gone some kind of interesting places. I love when Christy McCollum was here. Yes. Just some of the places that you go, I had never seen. that before. Treading with our feet. Oh, my heavens, Betsy. Yeah, the foot irrigation. Yeah. So I've really enjoyed it. Here's the deal. Scripture is not static. Correct. So anybody who thinks I can read this through in a year, read this through one time, and pull everything that's out of it that applies to me, I'm like, it is a supernatural text. It's more like looking at different facets of a diamond. Yes. So I've been a Bible banger since I was a kid. I'm 62. So I spent way more than 50 years and at least 30 deeply studying in it. Right. I'm still amazed. Yes. I'm more in love with this love letter we call the Bible now as a much older woman in the body of Christ than I ever was as a young woman. Yeah. Of course, I've probably forgotten more than I've learned because my mind is kind of a colander now. But don't you love that you keep seeing fresh things that remind us of how good our God is? Yeah, it reminds me of a kaleidoscope. Yeah. As you turn it, it comes together one way, you turn it, and it comes together another way. You've got a story to kick us off. All about Joshua. Yes, and I wanted you to tell that. And then we'll kind of dive into the narrative a little bit more. Share that with us. Yeah, and I think it's important you said narrative, because sometimes people think of the Old Testament, and they think, oh, it's like God is wrath, and he's going to whack us over the head. It's mostly narrative. It's mostly narrative. Yeah. Story, and you can find yourself in the stories. Yeah, my nephew, who you love very much, who lived with Missy and I. So I love his mama. So I always want to be real careful when I say this. He's more of a kind of nephew son to me because, you know, just loved him since he was born. And then for him living with us for a while, we got a special close. Anyway, his name is John Michael. And I just think he hung the moon. And he came home. And this was several years ago when he was much younger. He's 26 now. So he was probably 20 or so when this happened. And he came home from a church he was attending at the time. And he had gone through kind of a very short class there that was more or less a discipleship class. And he came home and he said, Aunt Lisa. Kind of one of the guys he had met there who didn't know him very well. Yeah. Prophesied over him. And I love prophecy. But in this case, I'm not sure I would deem it that because this guy really didn't know John Michael. But he told John Michael he had a Joshua spirit. Okay. So John Michael, you know, he's young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lisa, I have a Joshua spirit. I can hear it. And I was quiet. And, you know, when I don't respond verbally, I'm surprised the theme from Jaws doesn't start to play. Because it's usually I'm like, oh, help, oh, help, what do I say? because what I'm thinking is, I think you have a Joshua spirit. So he kind of was excited, but you tell he was waiting for me to weigh in. And so, I don't know, a minute passes and he finally goes, do you think I have a Joshua spirit? And I said, well, honey, I think you are growing into a godly man who will reflect the spirit of Joshua. because I wanted to go, let me be careful with this. And he kind of looked stricken. And I said, honey, do you know why God chose Joshua to succeed Moses, to become the one who actually left? After Moses is buried on Mount Demo, which we can talk about that at some point. But Moses doesn't get to lead those sweaty ingrates into the promised land. It's Joshua. I said, do you know why he chose Joshua to lead the Israelites into the promised land? And he said, yes, ma'am, because he was a great leader. And I said, no, honey. I said, nobody really knew who Joshua was. He was one of the quieter guys. I said, it's because Joshua spent so much time alone in the presence of God. And I said, our world tends to see platform and influence as being the markers of a great leader. I said, but God didn't choose Joshua because of his influence. God chose Joshua because he imitated God because he had spent so much time alone with God. He knew what it was to be godly. And so that's one of the things I love the most about the name of this book is the person that this narrative is named after because he's not one that would be chosen necessarily as a leader by most. Yes. Because he didn't dislocate his own shoulder by patting himself on the back. He didn't read his own press release. That's so good. And then you stop and think, Joshua, there were only two spies. That's right. And we'll come to another one of the Bible who went into the promised land to go, can we go? And there were only two, Joshua being one, who came back with positive reports. And Allie, even you think about that, an entire generation missed the promised land. Because 10 gave a negative report. Negative report. And you go, man, we need to be careful how we report things. I always want to go, don't say that can't happen or God can't do this. And again, I'm not one of the, I'm not a name it, claim it girl. But I go, man, be careful about the reports you're speaking of. Yes. Because in this case, an entire generation misses the promised land. And so the fact that he did what wasn't popular. Yes. He did what didn't trend. Yes. Is what made him a great leader. I love that about Joshua. I want to go back. I want to pick up a thread about Joshua's character for just a moment, because I think it's really important. We see him throughout the scripture at these very particular times with Moses. But there's one part of his story that really, really interests me. He goes up with Moses onto Mount Sinai for the giving of the law, which is hell. And a lot of people miss that. A lot of people miss that. So, I mean, he is right there by the side. And then he remains at the Ten of Meeting. The Scripture says he won't depart from it. That's right. That's what you were talking about. And then Moses calls him to go into the land, obviously with Caleb and the other spies. And he brings back this good report. But what is it about—there's something when we look at Joshua's story about this doggedness to remain, to be close to. You know how Paul says, mimic me as I mimic Christ? That's right. And thinking about John Bible. Can you imagine being able to say that sincerely with sincere humility? Yes. Like that was not an arrogant boast. It was, there was humility in, I'm going to hang on to the hem of Jesus's garment and you hang on to me. Yes. Wow, to be able to say that. Yes, and the Lord was training him up through proximity. And so we didn't talk about going here today, but I'm just wondering as we look back on Joshua's development. You know, you're becoming the kind of man. You're becoming the kind of person who can be entrusted with leadership into the promised land. Lisa, has there been someone in your life that's been like a Moses in your young life as you were developing as a leader that you were kind of staying close to? I wonder about this power of apprenticing and this power of—I think in my own life, I don't have, when I look back, just getting very real, I don't have a whole lot of people when I was coming up that said, here's the way, follow me. You were one of those, but it occurred very late in my life. I mean, I was already 41. And so I look back on my life and go, I didn't really have a lot of mentors that said, let's go up the mountain a little bit. Or let me help you as you're going off to follow God in this endeavor. Here's the way to do it. Did you have that? I mean, you know, at first when you said that, you know how the wheels start spinning. Yeah, you start turning. Yeah. And I also have had more spiritual mentors in my adult life than I did when I was young. But there was one particular woman. She's still with us, retired. But she was a coach at the high school I went to, transferred to when I was a sophomore. And she was the school liaison, I guess you would call them, the chairperson for the Fellowship of Christianity. athletes. And my best friend and I, Cindy, started FCA, a chapter of FCA in our high school fellowship with Chris Athletes because we wanted to meet football players was part of our agenda. And we loved Jesus. And Donlon had to have a staff liaison. And so we knew Donlon was a Christian because we'd had her in some classes. She taught health and she was overt about how much she loved Jesus. And I think she had a fish sticker on her car. But when she became our, you know, kind of our spiritual mama. I mean, she was committed. As a single woman, didn't have kids of her own. She was so intentional about pouring it into us. You know, she was the type of kind of big sister, spiritual aunt, if you will, who would notice things I had done, would notice what I had said, would notice something we had done with Bible study, would come back with a book, would be like, Lisa, I think you'd really love this by C.S. Lewis. And I'd be like, okay. And so for three years she didn just pour into me She was kind of the very much a Barnabas Yeah She spoke words of life She gave me a positive report. My dad was old school and he told me that he would invest a dime in my college education. Do you remember that? Yeah, because he believed that girls just went to college to find husbands and they never used their degrees. So he said I would be a bad investment. And I never told her that. I think somehow she picked up on the fact that I would have to get a scholarship to go to college. And she just kind of made it her agenda. This was back in the day. There's no social media. Your coach had to like videotape you with a real, real tape and then mail that, physically mail that. There's no email attachments to coaches to advocate for you. I got a college scholarship. She drove me, you know, two states away with three other girls. She was just such an advocate for us, and she always tied that advocacy to how God advocates for us. So she wasn't a big Bible teacher, loved the Bible, but she kind of wanted us to teach and to learn. But she modeled, probably much like Joshua, she just modeled who God is as being our advocate. And so, yeah, she would never have said she mentored me, but I, yeah, I walked in paths I probably wouldn't have walked in had it not been for her advocacy. I think that's just something we've lost in our modern era. Or it's kind of cheesy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's formulaic instead of organic. I so believe, I'm sure you've heard this, that we're all supposed to have, in the case of women, they'd say a Paul, someone who's 20 years, and a Timothy. Someone you're pouring into. and a Timothyette. But yeah, there should always be somebody a little further along the way in your walk of faith. Obviously, you need community. You need shoulder-to-shoulder peers. And then I think we should always be pouring into someone who's younger than us in the faith. Yes. But I do think we don't see that as an integral part of discipleship as often as we should. And yet, you see the fruit of it in Joshua because he tucked right up under Moses' wing. He did. He did. And as we turn the page from Moses' leadership to Joshua's leadership, we see that Moses lays hands on him. That's right. And the Spirit blesses him. Blesses him. Bless him. There's an important lesson there, right? A huge lesson. In a transition time, are you blessing the next generation? Are you giving him the baton and letting it go? Right. Man, a lot can be said for that. I read a book recently about how reticent business leaders are. Interesting. At a certain point. You know, they talk secession. Yeah. They have plans of succession. Yeah. But it really comes for them to go, I'm going to give you the authority. Yes. They might give responsibility to younger people in their organization or people who haven't been there as long. But they said, this is what this book said. I was reading a book on leadership. and it said that men who are both entrepreneurial, so they started the organization and then they lead the organization, are the least likely to let go of the baton at the appropriate time, to pass it on and to bless that next year. And you think about Moses. I've heard you teach beautifully on this. He's standing up on the mountain. He can see the promised land. It's right there. It's right there. We've been there. Yeah, we have. When you're at the Dead Sea in Israel, Nebo. You can see it. I mean, nobody knows the exact place he was being. But where we think. You can see where it was. Yeah. And still not apprehending the promise. He releases the next generation to take it. And can you imagine, it's one thing to go, I'm going to get a beach condo in Florida and play golf. Bless you. He longs to be in the promise. He does. He does. And rather than being jealous or reticent or angry or bitter, he knows, I long to be there and I'm not going to get to Joshua. Joshua. I mean, the blessing. And the people probably wouldn't have followed Joshua had it not been Moses' blessing. And the humility, which we read of Moses' humility. So let's move on into the transition of leadership. So we've had the blessing. The first chapter of Joshua basically says, as the Spirit was with Moses, he's resting on Joshua. And then we have the command to go in to the promised land. We have the encounter where spies are sent in again. We have the account of Jericho. And then we come back and we're preparing to take the land, okay? Right, right, right. And you and I have talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating. Oh, that's one of my favorite chapters in the Old Testament. Absolutely. Joshua has seen a miracle or two with water, right? When the Dead Sea parted, right? Where God parted the Red Sea and they walk across on the dry land. Right, the beginning of the wilderness. Yes. You go back to Exodus. All the way back. Yes. All the way back. A lot of similarities. Carol, except. In the Red Sea and Jordan. Except. No. You teach it. You teach it. Okay, well, no, no, no. I just loved it. I just think it's such an interesting component of the story. They have to cross another body of water to go into the cross. It's that flood state. So it's not as big as the Red Sea, but it's not a little dinky river. It's not a little dinky river. And the Lord basically says, consecrate yourselves to the people. There's a whole story there, but get ready. I'm about to move. And when you see the priests gather up the ark and begin to move forward, you follow them. And when the priests put their feet into the water, the water parts. And I love that the miracle is similar, Lisa, but God never does it in exactly the same way, does he? There's, in my opinion, a massive difference between the Red Sea. You've got 40 years between the miracle of parting the Red Sea and a very similar, watery miracle. And the significance is, in Exodus 19, God says, you know— Stand back. Yeah, stand back. Just basically get in your lawn chairs, take your Yetis, and just sit on the banks. And obviously, I'm taking a lot of liberty because they were scared. They're running from the Pharaoh's army. But I'll do all the work. That's right. So all you have to do is observe the miracle. Yes. But now they've spent 40 years with God. And we've talked about the kindness of God in giving them that wilderness season. That was less about I'm going to teach the Israelites a lesson and more about I'm going to teach them to trust me. So for 40 years, I'm going to be your provision. I'm going to be your protection. I'm going to be the presence. That's right. That never leaves you. And so after he has established this relationship with the Israelites and they get to another watery barrier, keeping them away from God's promise, keeping them from the promised land, God says, OK, I'm going to part this one, too. but the buts are always a good deal in Scripture. He says, but this time you have to participate in the miracle. He doesn't say, stand back and watch me do it. He says, I want you to join me in it. Start to walk. You don't have to do the heavy lifting. Right. But I'm not going to pardon until the priests put their feet in the water. That's right. So you've got to at least get your feet wet. And how kind of God, the dignity He gives His people of going, I'm going to partner with you in the miracle. You're not babies anymore. Right. So you're not just going to watch me do miracles and clap and post it on social media. Right. You actually get to be part of kingdom purposes. And so that, to me, is the most beautiful. So they spent this time with God, and now you see them going, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, and I'm going to actually follow God while it's still at flood stage. Right. So it didn't look like an easy river to cross. No, it did not. Which takes us to the promise in Isaiah where he says, you're not going to drown. They're not going to—the waters will not overcome it. They will not overcome it. And doesn't it remind you, when you talk about the miracle being done in a different way, I can't help but think of Jesus. In one case, he's spitting in the mud, and he's— That's right. In another case, he's saying, stretch forth your hand. That's right. In another case, he's saying, little girl, I say to you, say to you, get up. So there's this beautiful creativity to the miracles of God. When we make what is supernatural, formulate. We usually lose the super part. That's so good. Because when you look at, you know, and again, I'm going backwards and forwards, but you see, we talk about shadow and substance all the time. He tells us stories. It's that diamond. You're like, oh, I see the miracle again. You remember with the ministry of Elisha, when the military officer from the other land comes in and has leprosy. Yes. And he says, I believe your prophet, the prophet of the true God, could heal me. Right. And Elisha doesn't even come out of his house. He basically texts him and says, go to the Jordan. And dip. Yeah. Now, be honest with me, Allie, because I was with you in Israel two and a half years ago. Two and a half years ago. And when you see that Jordan River for the first time, is it impressive? Not so much. Not so much. I mean, in some places, it's kind of a— Yeah, dinky. It's dinky and kind of ditchy. Yeah, yeah. And when you get to this historical crossing, you know, I goaded you. And I always goad everybody into getting baptized not at the beautiful place, which is on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee near Capernaum. And that's really pretty. That's not the historical place to be baptized. I'm not saying it's wrong. A lot of people go there, and usually because of writing and all kinds of political issues, sometimes you can't go to what I call the janky Jordan. Right. which is where the Israelites crossed. It's where Elijah's chariot went up. It's where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. So it's the most historical place in the Jordan River, but it's south of the Sea of Galilee before it flows into the Dead Sea. In other words, it's where it dies. It's where the river goes to die. A little bit of sewage went off, a lot of agricultural runoff. It's brown. It's muddy. It's not very impressive. But when he says, I want to be healed of leprosy, and Elisha says, go dip in the Jordan, he's like, gross. We have really pretty clear water back in my country. Like, I'll just go to the Euphrates. I'll go to like a pretty pond. And he says, you've got to go to the Jordan. And then God says, and you've got to dip in seven times. And a lot of people say, well, seven in biblical numerology means completion. I go to a different place. Where do you go? Yeah, where do you go? Tell us. Okay, stop and think, Allie. Everybody knows this guy's a big deal. He's all over social media. He's got stars and stripes. Is it Naaman? Uh-huh. Yeah. Naaman's, I mean, he's basically the secretary of defense for a much bigger, much more impressive country. So everybody knows who he's been on the cover of time. And so people gather on the banks to watch this. This would have been noteworthy. Right. And they're like, oh, my goodness, can you believe it? I mean, that guy is like a really important dude, and he has leprosy. Right, right, right. You know, most contagious disease in that area, a lot of stigma with leprosy. And he has to peel off his armor. God says you can't hide behind the facade of that impressive armor. He peels it off. So just imagine everybody's watching this going, ooh, nasty. So he's already lost stigman by exposing himself. and then he dips in the first time and everybody's like, and then he comes up and nothing's happened. And then he goes in the second time and people are like, what's going to happen? By the third time, people are, you know, they're putting their coolers up, folding up their chairs. They're walking off. They're like, this isn't even that exciting. It's seven times that he has to trust that God will do it. I can't do it. There's no formula. This is what Yahweh told me. And it's the seventh time that he comes up and he's completely healed. And I think if God had said through Elisha, if you'll climb up in the highest tree and do a triple gainer, then the leprosy will leave. He'd go, well, yeah, I'll do that. And that would be performative. And he'd bring something to the table. So he would have made an investment into his own redemptive miracle. And God goes, no, I'm going to show you this is all me. That is so cool. And I think you've got to see that when you look at especially the miraculous healings. They're not formulaic. There's no one, two, three. That's right. And we get what we want. Otherwise, God would be a Coke machine. That's right. And if you just find the right change, you can get out the soda you want. That's not who he is. He's transcendent. He's holy. He's good. He's for us, not against us. But don play him as a genie in a bottle Right right So as they begin to move forward one of the points that so poignant to me is that the priests stand in the middle of the river while the nation passes by And one of the things that— And don't you know that's scary? Well, and that's the thing— Think of the visual part of that. You can hear the water being held up. Right, and it says the waters are piled up. Piled up. What does that mean? Think of the noise, then. Right, right. When you're like, oh! Right, right. I mean, if either of these waves crashes on us, we are goners, baby. We're gone. And it says the priests carrying the Ark of the Lord's Covenant stood firmly on dry ground in the middle of the Jordan while all Israel crossed over. One of the things that, you know, I always like to think about Joshua and the people. But I have not spent as much time thinking about the faithfulness of the priests. What it would have cost to hold the Ark and the way that they were to treat the Ark. There are all kinds of stipulations. Stipulations. What they could hold, what they couldn't touch. Right. And to wonder how long it would have taken for the entirety of the nation, men, women, children, to walk through. Yeah, to walk through. And so I don't know that I have some cogent spiritual point, but there are times in our lives where I think we're standing for somebody else's miracle. And I see that here in this. Well, you know, when you said that, I immediately, I don't know why, but I went back to Shifrin Pua in Exodus, the midwives. Yeah. And, you know, they usually, if you were a midwife in that era, that meant you struggled with infertility. You didn't have children of your own. So you were assigned to help everybody else deliver their babies. And you stop and think how because of their faithfulness and their belief in God, when Pharaoh told them, kill the Israelite boys, they said no. Yeah. And their trust in God trumped their fear of Pharaoh because that meant they were going to be killed. That's right. And they weren't. God not only protected them, it said because of their faith, God gave them families of their own. Very beginning of Exodus. And you go, my goodness. Time after time after time after time, they get a text that says, will you come to Miriam's house? Will you come to Shohana's house? Will you come to Joanna? They're about to deliver. Yeah. Can you imagine that little bit of, I mean, it's a miracle, but it's not. It's not my miracle. It's not for me. It's not my miracle. And time after time after time, they were faithful in the little. And then you get to the end of Exodus chapter 1, it says, God gave them families of their own. Yes. I think we spend so much time thinking about the bright and the shiny and the big and the impressive. And it's like, just do the next right step in a way that honors God. And He will bring about, if your labor is long, the baby is usually bigger and healthier. Oh, that's good. Oh, that's good. That's good. So as they come up out of the river, there is a memorial of cairns, so to speak. God says, bring rocks out of the river. To represent one stone for each tribe. So that when your children pass by, 12 cents, when your children pass by, you can recount this story. Because your children are to go, why is that big pile of rocks there? That's right. What's up with that? There is, most scholars believe, a second memorial. And this just knocks me out. It says this in chapter 4, verse 9. It says, Joshua also set up 12 stones in the middle of the Jordan where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing. The stones are there to this day under the water. The secret, hidden memorial to God's faithfulness. Yes. And can you imagine Joshua's age, everything he's seen, how heavy the stones would have been? He's already watched this huge miracle. And yet, in my mind's eye, the sanctified imagination, I'm going, what did it cost him physically to roll those stones into a place that he knew no human eye would ever see? No one would see it. That memorial to secret faithfulness? Have you read about some of the great cathedrals, ancient cathedrals, how the workmen would carve these beautiful, intricate sparrows or just little creatures of nature, flowers, but they would hide them. So not one single person who ever came to that sanctuary to worship who looked at the grand architecture, they would never, ever, ever see that perfectly carved sparrow because they would hide it just like something for the Lord. Yes. And I've thought of that a lot. I want to have more hidden faithfulness in my life than I do applauded faithfulness. Yeah, yeah. And I think we live in a world, at least where we're discipled by exposure. Yeah. And it is only the things that can be seen that mattered and posted. And I mean, we all fall prey to it. Sure. I mean, it is the cash language of the culture that we live in. But when I look at people like Joshua, and I look at Jesus saying, go into your closet. Yeah. When you fast, wash your face. Yeah. Right? And the glory and the reward and the joy of hidden faithfulness, which we see here in Joshua. So they go in. They have to dispossess the land, so to speak. So we have all the famous battles. We have the sin of Achan and taking of the devoted things. We have all these incredible stories about the conquest. But at the end of Joshua, and we've never really sat here with this, so I'm really, really excited to see what you think and what you have to give us. I thought you were going to Caleb. I am going to Caleb. Oh, okay. I love Caleb. So we're going to the allotment of the land, okay? And this is a really long chapter, so I'm not going to read, but a few verses. But we're in Joshua 14, verse 6. So the descendants of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal. And this is what Caleb says to Joshua. And I want to hear where this takes you. It says, You know what the Lord promised Moses, the man of God, at Kadesh Barnea, about you and me. I was 40 years old when Moses, the Lord's servant, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to scout the land. I brought back an honest report, which you talked about at the beginning of today's episode. My brothers who went with me caused the people to lose heart, but I followed the Lord, my God, completely. On that day, Moses swore to me, the land where you have set your foot will be an inheritance for you and your descendants forever because you have followed the Lord, my God, completely. And then it goes on, and there is this bold ask where Caleb basically says, give me my mountain. That's right. And he asks for the hill country, which would have been interesting because the hill country were where the giants and the enemies live. You know that psalm that says, I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? And we think that we're singing, oh, our help, God is in the mountains. What God is saying, the psalmist is saying, my enemies are in the mountains. So I need you. I need you, God, to dispossess what is in the mountains, right? So we kind of twist that a little bit. That's right. But here, Caleb says, I want my mountain. I want the place of difficulty. That's right. And he even says, all right, whatever younger man among you can dispossess the enemies, I'm going to give my daughter to. So here's what I want to ask you. I want to ask you this. We're getting to be women of a certain age, you and me. And many of our listeners are probably women or men of a certain age. What is it that keeps a Caleb heart alive in us? Because I'm going to be really honest with you. The older I get, I have to really fight to keep in touch with a Caleb heart. My heart wants to say, just give me what's easy, Lord. Yeah. It's been enough. The journey has been enough. Yeah. And I want to know, I want to finish well. Yeah. God says of Caleb that he has a different spirit even. And so what is it, Lisa, what things do you find helpful that keep you leaning forward into what God has for you? Having that heart to say, give me my mountain. I'll say this first. Please say whatever you, yeah. Thanks, you, Hongamun, and I love you so much. You've been through a really, really, really hard season for the last couple of years. So I don't know that your exhaustion is something that you will continue to feel in the same measure that you feel it. you've been faithful and I don't see the rest of your life as being uphill in the negative sense. So I do want to say that to you. Thank you. And I'm six, seven years older than you. Yeah. I love that the phrase, I can't remember how you pronounce it, but wholly devoted is how he's described several times there. And you go wholly devoted and it's been 45 years. Yeah, yeah. Wholly devoted. 45 years. Yeah. So devotion is at least at some level related to waiting. When we were on the Christmas tour this year, you said waiting time is not wasted time. And I think we tend to think what God is doing for me is on the other side of this waiting period. I'm like, no, waiting is not stagnant. Waiting is like the kiln that you put the pottery in that cooks it, that makes it really, really beautiful. That's really good. Yeah. And, I mean, you look at David, the time between David's anointing when Samuel said, actually, the kid with clear silk cream on his face is the one I'm going to choose to be the second king of Israel. And then you look at, so that's his, you know, anointment. Yeah. And so he was, he was what, seventh grade-ish? Yeah, 13, 14. And then you look and see when he's finally appointed, when he finally occupies the throne of Israel, it's over 30 years. And so as a 62-year-old woman, I was actually talking to Missy about this just a night or two ago. But I said, I was telling her how proud I was of her. And I said, honey, every single day of my life has been worth it. I said, what God has led me to, I didn't have the faith to pray for, much less envision. And I'm not saying it's all been easy, but actually some of the sweeter seasons have been the hardest because it's in those seasons where I've been standing in the middle of my own Jordan, wondering if I was going to drown, scared to death. And God gave me the grace to stand. I didn't have it in myself. I would have run off like a yellow-bellied satsucker had I followed my own desire. But somehow God, it's almost like there was a glorious divine weight that held me in places I didn't have the faith to stand in or to collapse in. And it's in those places that I begin to really believe I'm not going to drown. So I still have deep ends in my life. I'm just not afraid I'm going to drown anymore. So it's like more of it is cake now. I was at a church just a few weeks ago. And, you know, I love altars. Altars are one of my favorite. I mean, do you know I've put stones in my yards in multiple places because I love the tactile stuff. But anyway, this was an altar at the front of the church where a lot of people had come to pray at the end of a time that we have a corporate worship. And I just want to be up in it praying, especially with kids. Oh, yeah. And there were a ton of high school and college kids at this event, a couple of hundred kids at this altar. And so I just always pray that God will give me, and I'm not saying this is like some incredible prophetic thing, but you'll just feel an inclination to go pray for specific people. And there's just this one young woman, looked like she was in her 20s, that I just, I was making a beeline. I just really felt like I wanted to pray with her. And I kind of bumped into a bunch of other people. So I probably had, I don't know, 20 minutes of praying for other people before I finally make it to this young woman. And, well, she's down, you know, on her knees at the altar. And I didn't want to interrupt a holy moment, but I just— You were compelled. And so I just turn around and flop down. You know, at this age, if I get down, it's going to be hard for me to get up. You know, and I'm dressed up and everything, and I somehow get down. It was very—not very graceful. And I plop with my back to the altar. And I mean, I'm inches from her. And I said, hey, baby, my name's Lisa. And I'd just been teaching. So she knew who it was. And I said, would it be okay if I pray with you? and she just began to weep and she said, you know me. And I said, I do. Well, she tells me this story about how a couple of years before I'd been in a totally different state, in a different church, at a different altar with her. And it was there that she had given her heart to Jesus and she had just gotten out of jail from being incarcerated for drug abuse possession and intent to sell And she said you were there when I gave my heart to Jesus And basically there I told her that he had a call in her life that she had purpose And she begins to recount to me, you know, three years later, different state, different altar of how I had the undeserved privilege of being at that other place with her that was for her a memorial. and she said, I'm in a really difficult place. And I saw that you were speaking at this revival and I prayed that God would somehow, I'm 2,000 people at this place. I prayed that somehow, some way God would, now I'm not special. For her, it's like sometimes you pray for a particular stone. It doesn't make it any more than a rock, but that's what she prayed for. It's a tangible reminder that God saw her. And she said, and I thought, what an amazing God that he put that burning in my spirit out of several other people at the altar. Get to her. All I could see was the back of her head, Allie. Yeah, yeah. And I thought, I'm going for the back of that head. I am a moron half the time. No, you're not. You know me. I have, you know, I have been forgiven of more than I've been faithful in. And yet our God would allow me to sit with this precious young woman who's running toward him and allow me, goofball me, to be a stone in her Ebenezer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. This is not a gig for me. This is not a vocation to me. I believe this more than I've ever believed it in my whole life. And I see it. I see him. I see through the glass clearly. I mean, dimly, not clearly. And I miss it half the times, but you can't tell me we don't have a good God who orders our steps and whose will for us is to shepherd us toward hope and toward a future. Because he's done it in my life, time after time. And I wasn't a Joshua when I wasn't faithful and I wasn't hidden with him. Instead, I was out posing on platforms because I was insecure. And he still has given me promised land. That's where I have an inner Caleb. It's because of what he's redeemed me from. So I can't say like Caleb. I literally can't. I wish I could. I can't say I've been wholly devoted. I can't. I can say over the last 45 years of my life, you know me, that I have really dropped the ball. I've fumbled it on the first yard line. And He has picked me up, and He has carried me to new places because He is a good God. So I aspire to be more like Caleb, but I can tell you as a non-Caleb, He's still a faithful God, and He still goes to us mountains we didn't deserve. Yeah, and the power of what you just shared, Lisa, is that you will share it. And that's what I want to say to you. I think we live in a culture where everything is so polished and so curated, and I need to hear. I need to hear so that faith is stoked in me that I might dare to say, is there a mountain left, Lord? At this point in my story, I'll take a molehill. I'll take a molehill. If you're in it. Right, if you're in it. But it's your transparency. And I think as we've got so many people joining us on the porch today, don't be afraid of the parts of your story that are broken and bruised. Hold them out so that they might become a trophy to his power. That's what I'm hearing. That's right. It's not your perfection. It's his faithfulness. And don't you see that time and time and time again with Israel? Yes. God loves them all. He loves them all. Joshua is the exception. He's not the rule. Right. That's correct. Caleb is the exception. He's not the rule. They're grumbling and complaining. And I'm not saying sin is no big deal. I know you're not. Sin is the reason we are separated from the intimacy God designed us for. But his grace is greater still. His grace is greater still. And they go in and they receive the allotment. I just kind of want to put a bow on it. Okay, and you didn't know I was going to do this, but you've been working on something and you have been burning the candle at both ends. You are in the throes of finishing up your dissertation, which for those that may not know, it is just a honking long research paper. How many words? It feels like it's been 45 years. Yeah, it feels forever. For years, right? I've been in school for six years. For six years. Yeah. And I know a little bit about what your dissertation revolves around. And I'm really hoping and praying that you might publish it. I have, you know, I just feel like the Lord. You're pathologically biased. I am. And I am proud of it. But one of the things you talk about, and I actually have a paper that you've been working on. to kind of snag this from our little dressing room where we gather to pray as we've been talking about the allotment of the land given to Caleb. We're coming back to you. The way he portioned out the promised land. Yeah, the way he portioned out the promised land. But I want you to talk for just a moment to wrap us up about the daughters of Zelophehad. They're not necessarily in Joshua, but they are related. They're implied. They're implied because of the allotment of the land. Would you tell us a little bit of that story? And then there's something here in your dissertation that I want to read. Well, you know that concise is not my gift, obviously. That's okay. No, give us the— But as fast as I can, in Numbers 27, you see this story that just seems so countercultural. Because in the Old Testament era that is patriarchal, inheritance was usually patrilineal, which means it went from fathers to sons. And in Numbers 27, you see these five women with crazy names. One of them is named Hogla. You're not going to find that on a bicycle license plate in Gatlinburg. But their dad has passed away, Mr. Zalofah had. And so his portion of promised land that he was promised that you would have seen here in Joshua is going to go to one of his nephews because he has no sons. Right. Okay. And so these five. From male to male. From male to male. So that's where you get love, right marriages and all that and passed down to the daughters. And so these five daughters go to Moses, which is like you just can't imagine this in that patriarchal era. But they go to Moses and effectively go, we don't think this is fair. And you kind of expect them to be chastised or like disciplined on the spot. And instead, Moses and the high priest take their request to God. And it's in Numbers 27, God says the daughters of Zelophehad are right. And in Numbers 27, our God changes inheritance law. As a matter of fact, Allie, there's a suffragette. Those are the women who fought for the right to vote here in America. In 1900, a woman named Elizabeth Cady, I think Stanton, stood before the U.S. House of Representatives and cited the daughters of Zelofahad when she was asking the members of the House of Representatives, will you please give women the right to vote? Wow. And that's the portion I pulled out of your chest or take? No, no, no, no. It's perfect. It's just when sayings like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells were black women who lived in racial and gender discriminatory climate of the late 19th and early 20th century in North America. And they use this portion of scripture. Yeah. And that just blows me away. So you have women. And I'm not just just for women. It's for anyone who feels dispossessed. Yeah. Yeah. So anyone who thinks like me, maybe I messed up. Right. So I've miscarried the inheritance in my own life, or I don't come from a family who loved God, or I've got divorce in my background. And you go, that actually doesn't put a lid on your destiny. God took the ones that no one else would have given the promise to, and he gave them an allotment. And it's right there in Joshua. He says, those five daughters get the land. They get, and your land in the Old Testament denotes the presence of God. So it's not just an old faithful man. You also see these five daughters who no one would have given the promised land to, and God said, I choose them. And don't you see Jesus there? Don't you see the gospel that we've been grafted in to the inheritance? The inheritance that we receive. I think it's always bigger and more glorious. And the view is better than we have the faith to pray for. I love that. I love the book of Joshua. And we didn't even talk about the battle. So we just, we just really encourage you. Or the covenant ceremony at Shechem, which is super colorful. Yes, yes, yes. And painful. Yes. But we just want to encourage you as we're going through the Bible. I was thinking about this, Lise. Like, read along with us. Jot down what the Lord brings to your heart. Read the rest of the story. I think it's Paul Harvey that wants it, right? Read the rest the story because we are grabbing and spotlighting certain narratives, but there is so much more. It's so rich. I want to pray for folks maybe who have felt left out. Yeah. You know what I thought, Allie, when you said that, I thought there's somebody who this just stepped on a fresh bruise in them because they have a parent who died and they thought they kind of had hoped they would get an inheritance and they just found out. Again, I don't mean to sound like, oh, weird, but I just kind of had this, oh, there's somebody who's at an altar bitterly going, I can't believe. I got passed over. Yeah. I got passed over. I was invisible. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the richness of your word. It really does feel like drinking from a fire hose when we try to talk about Joshua and moving into the promised land and the dispossession of giants in the land and the war to take the land. and the allotment of the blessing and the inheritance. Father, I pray for anyone who just feels like they've been left out of the inheritance. I just think of that old scene from the movie, Oliver, when the kids are coming up for more food and there isn't any left. And so I feel like there are people that have joined us today who just feel like there isn't anything left for me. It's for everyone else, but it's not for me. Father, I pray that you would minister again that the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus, that you are more than enough, that you are the God who owns the cattle, a thousand cattle on a thousand hills. You have all provision in your hands. I pray for anyone, Lord, that's listening that thinks I don't know how I'm gonna pay the electric bill. I don't know how I'm gonna buy new shoes for my kids. I pray for real provisional needs, that you would show yourself faithful, that you would intervene and step into the story in a material, tangible way. Miraculous. And then I pray for those who feel that they've been passed over, as Lisa just spoke of, that something that they thought was coming to them, maybe that they even felt you had ministered to them was coming, and it's passed them by. I pray that they would know that the promise has not passed them by, that, Father, in you, all that they need exists and that you are about restoring. You are about restoration. You are about raising the ruins. You are about bringing inheritance to us in Christ. So we thank you for that today. We just bless you for the power of your word and the glory that we see, your glory, represented in these pages. in black and white. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you.