Jericho

Jericho
By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were
encircled for seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab did not
perish with those who did not believe, when she had
received the spies with peace. (Hebrews 11:30-31, NKJV)

Now Joshua the son of Nun sent out two men from Acacia
Grove to spy secretly....

So they went, and came to the house of a harlot named
Rahab, and lodged there.

[Rahab] took the two men and hid them.

she let them down by a rope through the window, for her
house was on the city wall; she dwelt on the wall.

And the LORD said to Joshua, "This day I will begin to
exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know
that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

[the priests] who bore the ark came to the Jordan, dipped
[their feet] in the edge of the ... [Jordan] ..., the
waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose
in a heap ... and the people crossed over opposite Jericho.
Then the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of the
LORD stood firm on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan;
and all Israel crossed over on dry ground, until all the
people had crossed completely over the Jordan.

the LORD said to Joshua: "...You shall march around
[Jericho], all you men of war; you shall go all around the
city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests
shall bear seven trumpets of rams' horns before the ark.
But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven
times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets.... all the
people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the
city will fall down flat...." (Joshua 2:1-2,4,15,
3:7,15-17, 6:2-5 NKJV)

Joshua was now the leader of the nation of Israel, a
commission he had accepted in faith. The first task the
Lord gave him was to enter the land of Canaan and attack
the fortress of Jericho. Even as Moses had lead the nation
of Israel through the Red Sea, the Lord performed a similar
miracle on Joshua's behalf at the Jordan River during flood
season.

Before crossing the Jordan River, Joshua sent spies into
Jericho. Obviously the king of Jericho wasn't the least bit
happy to have foreigners spying on his fortress, so he
immediately initiated a city-wide search to find and kill
the spies. Everyone in the city had heard of the exploits
of the nation of Israel since leaving Egypt, and were very
afraid. However, a woman of Jericho, who was a prostitute,
exercised faith by hiding and protecting the spies with the
stipulation they would guarantee her and her family's
safety. The only guarantee she received was the integrity
of the verbal conditional promise of the spies she
protected: as long as she and her family remained in her
house during Israel's attack, they would all be safe.

When it was time for Joshua to attack the city of Jericho,
the Lord gave Israel a series of prophetic acts to perform:
circle the city once a day for six days, and on the seventh
day, circle it seven times, sound the trumpets, shout, and
then expect the walls of the city to fall down. Joshua and
Israel faithfully performed the prophetic acts, Rahab
faithfully brought her entire family into her house, the
walls of the city fell, the city of Jericho was destroyed,
and Rahab and her family were saved.

What lessons can we learn from Joshua, Rahab, and the
destruction of Jericho? First, the Lord honors the true
faith of any individual, without any respect to occupation,
race, or nationality. Second, faith depends on the
faithfulness, integrity, and ability of the object of that
faith. Third, the reward of faith depends on meeting the
conditions of that faith. Fourth, the performance of a
prophetic act constitutes a statement of faith, with the
reward being proportional to the faithful and enthusiastic
execution of the vision received.

----------------------------------------------------
Jon Straumfjord is the author of numerous articles about
the Seven Spirits of God and the God of the Bible. He is
also the creator of the website http://www.7-spirits.com ,
and is the author of the book "The Seven Spirits of God."

Joshua, the New Leader of Israel

Joshua, the New Leader of Israel
After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, ... the
LORD spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses' assistant,
saying: "Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, {D1}
arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the
land which I am giving to them — the children of Israel.
{P1} Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon
I have given you, ... {P2} No man shall be able to stand
before you all the days of your life; {P3} as I was with
Moses, so I will be with you. {P4} I will not leave you nor
forsake you. {D2} Be strong and of good courage, ... be
strong and very courageous, that you may {D3} observe to do
according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded
you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left,
that you may prosper wherever you go. {D4} This Book of the
Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall {D5}
meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do
according to all that is written in it. {P5} For then you
will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good
success.... Be strong and of good courage; {D6} do not be
afraid, nor be dismayed, for {P6} the LORD your God is with
you wherever you go." (Joshua 1:1-9, NKJV)

Moses had been a prophet like none other in the entire
history of Israel, and was probably the very first apostle,
the second being Jesus Christ Himself (Hebrews 3:1-2,
Deuteronomy 18:15-1). The nation of Israel had learned to
respect and obey Moses over their 40 years of wandering in
the wilderness. Moses had demonstrated his power and
authority through a variety of miracles that had been
performed through him, and through the demonstration of the
wisdom the Lord had bestowed upon him. Now that Moses was
dead, a new leader had to be commissioned.

Immediately after the death of Moses, the Lord turned to
Joshua, the son of Nun, who had been Moses' faithful
servant for the previous 40 years. He had been with Moses
at Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:13), spent considerable time in
the tabernacle in the wilderness (Exodus 33:11), and was
one of only two of twelve spies sent into the land of
Canaan that stood up on behalf the Lord and survived the
plague that killed the other 10 (Numbers 11:28 - 14:38). He
was probably at least 60 years by this time, (he ultimately
lived to be 110 (Judges 2:8)), having spent the last 40
years as Moses' attendant and disciple. Yes he had
developed his own personal relationship with the Lord, yes,
he had been carefully observing Moses in virtually
everything he did, yes he was aware of the call that was on
his life, but now he was being asked to step into Moses'
position himself, without his close friend and mentor.

Notice in the passage cited above, the Lord made six
demands of Joshua {D1-D6}, but also gave him six promises
{P1-P6}. Three times Joshua was told to be "strong and
courageous", and was also told not to be afraid. It is
very understandable that Joshua should be nervous about
taking over the command of an entire nation, especially
after witnessing Moses' hardships as the leader of that
same nation. Joshua must have felt incredibly inferior to
the task in light of the immense power and wisdom that was
demonstrated by Moses, even though he had been commissioned
by Moses himself several months or years before (Numbers
27:22-23). Joshua wouldn't be alone in this task since he
would be essentially a co-ruler with Eleazar the priest
(Numbers 32:28, 34:17).

There are no grandchildren in the kingdom of heaven. Even
the children of greatly anointed ministers of the Lord must
ultimately make conscious individual decisions to follow
the Lord and live in a close relationship with Him. Each
and every believer is responsible for his/her relationship
with the Lord. The Lord may provide a mentor and teacher
for a time, but each believer will stand or fall based on
his/her exercise of faith in the Lord, and righteousness
before men.

----------------------------------------------------
Jon Straumfjord is the author of numerous articles about
the Seven Spirits of God and the God of the Bible. He is
also the creator of the website http://www.7-spirits.com ,
and is the author of the book "The Seven Spirits of God."

Continuous, Focused Thought Sustains and Initiates Creation

Continuous, Focused Thought Sustains and Initiates Creation
The Bible describes creation happening at one point in
time. However, the Jewish mystics, or kabbalists, claim
creation happens continuously. This means creation is
occurring right now, in this moment.

In fact, kabbalists describe creation as a thought in the
mind of God. If God had the first creative thought —
the thought that caused the universe, the world, us to come
into existence, then God's continuous thought process or
focus on the thought of creation sustains that very same
creation. If God removed Its attention from that thought,
all of creation would disappear. If God were to focus for
even one moment on a new thought, the universe as we know
it — and us, too — would disappear. We and our
world would fold back into the Source of Creation from
whence we came.

All of creation is sustained constantly each and every
moment by the energy God continues putting into creation.
To understand this better, imagine creation as a light bulb
that stays illuminated as long as the electricity is on.
Turn off the power, and the light goes out.

From a Kabbalistic viewpoint, humans serve as God's
co-creative partners. Since in Jewish philosophy God's
essence is unknowable and without recognizable form, we can
assume that if humans were created in God's image we were
gifted with God's creative nature; the Divine creative
ability represents the only thing we may know about God
with any certainty. What do we co-create? Our lives and
the things in the world that we can directly affect.

While a Divine Plan influences the overall theme of our
lives, we can pick and choose how we get to that
pre-planned end. When we come to a fork in the road, we
decide to take the long or the short route. We focus our
thoughts on a desire and create it — good or bad,
right or wrong. Thus, God created the play and story line,
and we, the actors, improvise our parts based on what is
happening in the moment. We create...moment to moment.

If we are to be efficient and masterful co-creators, we
have to remember that, just like God, we must continue
focusing on what we are creating. We mustn't remove our
attention from what we want to manifest, or what we have
manifested, or it might just disappear. Take money for
example: Many people focus on creating wealth, and once
they have it they simply stop paying any attention to that
money at all. And then, one day, they discover there's no
more money in their bank account. The same holds true for
relationships. We may focus on creating one and actually
manage to manifest one. Maybe we even get married, but if
we then stop focusing on that relationship - if we place
our attention elsewhere, we might turn back to that
marriage only to find it has fallen apart.

When we are in the process of creating something, this
principle holds true as well. It takes all our focus and
attention to actually bring an idea into form. From the
moment we feel that inspiration to create something new,
just like God, we have to allow that desire to grow and to
overwhelm us. At that point we allow it to move into the
realm of thought, where we conceptualize it and put it into
words or pictures that detail what we want to bring into
this physical world. We allow all our thoughts to be
trained upon this desire. Then we begin feeling what it
would be like to have manifested that desire by asking
ourselves if we can truly imagine having it, and our focus
turns to that experience. From that feeling place, we
begin to get a sense of the inspired actions necessary to
bring that desire into the physical world, and our
attention turns to how to bring our desire into form though
doing as well as thinking and feeling. With continuous
focus in all four of these worlds - desire/inspiration,
thought, feeling and action - we see creation become
manifest in much the same way as God's focused attention
continuously manifests our world.

----------------------------------------------------
The author of The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation, Nina Amir
is a journalist, motivational speaker, and Kabbalistic
conscious creation coach. Register for the next kabbalah of
Conscious Creation teleseminar (3/26, 4/2,9,16,23,26) or
for a free preview teleseminar on 3/19. For information on
Amir's books, teleseminars and classes, visit
http://www.purespiritcreations.com , e-mail her at
namir@purespiritcreations.com or call 408-353-1943.