Another thing I’m learning from my son Matt is not to assume I know someone’s motives. The Bible speaks to this issue very clearly in the story of the Eastern Tribes in Joshua 22. The story begins in Numbers 32 as the Israelites are preparing to cross the Jordan. Still on the east side of the Jordan, after a successful battle, the leaders of Reuben and Gad approach Moses:

“The land that the LORD struck down before the congregation of Israel, is a land for livestock, and your servants have livestock.” And they said, “If we have found favor in your sight, let this land be given to your servants for a possession. Do not take us across the Jordan. (Numbers 32.4, 5, ESV)

Moses was vehement in his response:

But Moses said to the people of Gad and to the people of Reuben, “Shall your brothers go to the war while you sit here? Why will you discourage the heart of the people of Israel from going over into the land that the LORD has given them? (Numbers 32.6, 7, ESV)

In short, “You’re not going to sit here with your cattle while everyone else goes to war!” (That’s a lesson right there.) So the leaders of Reuben and Gad agreed that they would participate in the war effort and then return to the land east of the Jordan. And that’s what they did. In Joshua 22, they are ready to go back.

At that time Joshua summoned the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and said to them, “You have kept all that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you and have obeyed my voice in all that I have commanded you. You have not forsaken your brothers these many days, down to this day, but have been careful to keep the charge of the LORD your God. And now the LORD your God has given rest to your brothers, as he promised them. Therefore turn and go to your tents in the land where your possession lies, which Moses the servant of the LORD gave you on the other side of the Jordan. (Joshua 22.1 – 4, ESV)

And then we have what turns out to be a huge misunderstanding:

And when they came to the region of the Jordan that is in the land of Canaan, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh built there an altar by the Jordan, an altar of imposing size. And the people of Israel heard it said, “Behold, the people of Reuben and the people of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh have built the altar at the frontier of the land of Canaan, in the region about the Jordan, on the side that belongs to the people of Israel.” And when the people of Israel heard of it, the whole assembly of the people of Israel gathered at Shiloh to make war against them. (Joshua 22.10 – 12, ESV)

The tribes on the west side reasoned this way: “They have built an altar. Therefore, they intend to worship a different God or worship God in the wrong place. We must stop them!” They could have asked what the intent was. That would have saved a lot of time. Here’s part of their response (you can read the whole story in Numbers 32 and Joshua 22):

Then the people of Reuben, the people of Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh said…,“The Mighty One, God, the LORD! The Mighty One, God, the LORD! He knows; and let Israel itself know! If it was in rebellion or in breach of faith against the LORD, do not spare us today for building an altar to turn away from following the LORD… No, but we did it from fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, ‘What have you to do with the LORD, the God of Israel? For the LORD has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you people of Reuben and people of Gad. You have no portion in the LORD.’ So your children might make our children cease to worship the LORD. Therefore we said, ‘Let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you, and between our generations after us, that we do perform the service of the LORD in his presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and peace offerings,…” (Joshua 22.21 – 27, ESV)

An entire chapter of Joshua is devoted to this event. It must be an important lesson.

So resist the temptation to pronounce premature judgment on anything before the appointed time when all will be fully revealed. Instead, wait until the Lord makes his appearance, for he will bring all that is hidden in darkness to light and unveil every secret motive of everyone’s heart. Then, when the whole truth is known, each will receive praise from God. (1 Corinthians 4.5, TPT)

I love it when I learn something from my (adult) children! Recently, our son Matt, age 43, took a week to move from one apartment to another within the Denver area. The Monday of the next week, he was scheduled to start a new job so I wrote to him the night before asking how the move went and was he ready for work the next day.

If it had been me, I would have been scrambling around trying to make sure most things were put away and that my office was set up nearly perfectly. In response to such a question, I would have said whether I had accomplished all my goals…or not. Instead, Matt wrote:

What’s done is done, what’s not done is not done, and the sun rises and sets another day.

Matt wisely chooses not to put himself under pressure and is an excellent practitioner of “do the next thing.”

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6.34, NIV)

When I quoted Edwin Markham a few days ago, I had no idea who he was. I had just heard the little poem I shared quoted over 50 years ago. When I looked him up, I discovered he became famous over a poem called “The Man with a Hoe,” which was inspired by a French painting of the same name. There is something worth thinking about there. I offer both without comment.

    Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
    Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
    The emptiness of ages in his face,
    And on his back the burden of the world.
    Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
    A thing that grieves not and that never hopes.
    Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
    Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
    Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
    Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

    Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
    To have dominion over sea and land;
    To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
    To feel the passion of Eternity?
    Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
    And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
    Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
    There is no shape more terrible than this —
    More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed —
    More filled with signs and portents for the soul —
    More fraught with menace to the universe.

    What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
    Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
    Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
    What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
    The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
    Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
    Time’s tragedy is in the aching stoop;
    Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
    Plundered, profaned, and disinherited,
    Cries protest to the Powers that made the world.
    A protest that is also a prophecy.

    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
    Is this the handiwork you give to God,
    This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
    How will you ever straighten up this shape;
    Touch it again with immortality;
    Give back the upward looking and the light;
    Rebuild in it the music and the dream,
    Make right the immemorial infamies,
    Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

    O masters, lords and rulers in all lands
    How will the Future reckon with this Man?
    How answer his brute question in that hour
    When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
    How will it be with kingdoms and with kings —
    With those who shaped him to the thing he is —
    When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world.
    After the silence of the centuries?

Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden…The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2.7 – 10, 15, ESV)

Yesterday I suggested that the various ministries necessary to keep a church running don’t need to compete with discipleship and disciple-making: just make the ministry teams disciple-making teams as well!

Here are a few suggestions stimulate your thinking on how to make that happen:

• The first key is intentionality. Good things can happen if we’re intentional about it. If the ministry wants to see its members growing in discipleship in addition to providing the service the team is responsible for, the team will seek out or figure out means.
• Second, although I said yesterday that the team leader needed to be the disciple-making leader also, that’s not quite true. If necessary, the ministry team leader can allow a more skilled disciple-making leader on the team to lead that effort.
• Everyone in the church, and, therefore, all ministry team members should know how to have daily time with God. Then ministry team meetings should include time for folks to share what God is telling them. Including sharing in team meetings provides an incentive to keep up the practice!
• The ministry team could decide to complete a discipleship tool like the 2:7 Series or Every Man a Warrior (if all team members are men). People tend to stick to their discipleship training better if they are already part of an existing group (like the ministry team).
• As an example of combining ministry with disciple-making, consider the New Commandment Ministries model. They’re now calling it “Meeting to Meet Needs” and they help churches form teams of men for long-term ministry to widows, single moms, and fatherless children.

Here’s the verse I included yesterday – it speaks of intentionality “on the way.”

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently…, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6.6, 7, ESV)

And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful. (Titus 3.14, ESV)

Speaking of making disciples in a church context, one challenge in many churches is that “disciple-making” – or even “discipleship” – conflicts with all the other things that are going on. Many church members’ schedules are completely full with things they volunteer for in the church – everything from leadership to ushering to the casserole ministry or the prayer ministry or … [you fill in the blank].

Here’s a solution:

Turn those ministry teams into disciple-making teams!

That is, the leader of the parking lot ushers has two jobs: build a team to handle Sunday morning traffic AND disciple the folks on the parking lot usher team. The casserole ministry leader has two jobs: organize people to deliver food to members (and maybe non-members!) who need food AND disciple the people on the casserole team. Get the idea?

How? I’ll throw out a few ideas tomorrow.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently…, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6.6, 7, ESV)

In keeping with our meditation yesterday that all of us have a part to play, and my organization, The Navigators, is one of many working to advance the Kingdom, I need to share a poem that applies to another conversation I had recently.

My friend and fellow disciple-maker and pastor coach Ray Bandi and I were discussing a certain book in which the author, a pastor, urges churches to intentionally make disciples (a good thing!). However, this pastor is very high on “the local church” as the ONLY means by which God works. There is no room in his system for organizations such as The Navigators. (By the way, for a thorough theological treatment of this issue, I strongly recommend the book Beyond the Local Church by Sam Metcalf. I captured a few of Sam’s main points on February 29, 2020.)

Back to the point at hand – yesterday’s blog on working together with other organizations – this poem came to mind:

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone… (Hebrews 12.14, NIV)

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12.18, NIV)

As most of you know, I serve with The Navigators, an organization dedicated, since 1933…

To know Christ, make Him known, and help others do the same^®.

A longer version of our mission statement reads:

Advancing the gospel of Jesus and his kingdom through spiritual generations living and discipling among the lost.

We think what we do and teach is very important, and I try to help EVERYONE (including pastors) live out what Paul said to Timothy:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (1 Timothy 2.1, 2, NIV)

I wrote about this in more detail back on March 25. That said, I have new respect for one element of our desired culture as a result of a national Zoom prayer gathering recently. Here’s the value:

We are unified and interdependent within The U.S. Navigators, across the Worldwide Partnership, and with the broader Body of Christ.

My friend and colleague Margaret Fitzwater shared this picture of the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier:

Margaret said she toured the ship recently and was impressed with all of its capabilities and the fact that it was a self-contained “city” on the ocean. But what struck her (and now, me) was that the Midway hosts a crew of 4,000 people – about the number of Navigator staff. She said, “Our whole organization could fit on that one ship. But think about how many other ships there are!”

Likewise, God has a lot of “ships” out there. The Navigators is but one. Just as one ship does not comprise the US Navy, one organization, no matter how good it is, does not comprise all of God’s work.

Margaret’s husband, Roy, closed with a quote from Chuck Swindoll. Here’s part of it – from a devotion he wrote on August 2, 2015:

• Nobody is a whole chain. Each one is a link. But take away one link, and the chain is broken.
• Nobody is a whole team. Each one is a player. But take away one player and the game is forfeited.
• Nobody is a whole orchestra. Each one is a musician. But take away one musician and the symphony is incomplete.
• We need each other. You need someone and someone needs you. Isolated islands, we’re not.

Roy closed with this fitting text:

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Romans 12.4, 5, NIV)

Here’s a new (for me) observation from Joshua, read in the context of Jesus always seeming to defy Jewish tradition. This is from the famous Jericho story:

Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the LORD. And the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the LORD walked on, and they blew the trumpets continually. And the armed men were walking before them, and the rear guard was walking after the ark of the LORD, while the trumpets blew continually. And the second day they marched around the city once, and returned into the camp. So they did for six days. On the seventh day they rose early, at the dawn of day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. Joshua 6.12 – 15, ESV, emphasis mine)

If they marched around the city for seven consecutive days, one of those days was a Sabbath! This confirms something I’ve always thought: when you’re on mission, you don’t always have to worry about the fine points of the law. Or as they say in the military, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” As described in the book of Numbers, when the people lost their mission to go into the promised land in chapters 13 and 14, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a large part of chapters 15 through 19 is given to laws. For example,

The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.” (Numbers 15.37 – 39, ESV)

I guarantee that no one was concerned about tassels when they were conquering the land as described in Joshua. In fact there is no mention of tassels again…except by Jesus in criticizing the Pharisees:

They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long,… (Matthew 23.5, ESV)

It’s been said that when churches lose sight of the mission, they start arguing about the color of the carpet in the sanctuary.

And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2.27, 28, ESV)

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6.8, ESV)

It’s April, and my reading plan has me in Joshua – one of the few “success” books in the Bible. I love the way it starts. Ready?

After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, “Moses my servant is dead…” (Joshua 1.1 – 2, ESV)

Inspiring, yes?

What’s inspiring is what follows. “Moses my servant is dead, therefore, build a memorial to him.” Nope. “Moses my servant is dead, and I don’t know what Israel is going to do without him.” Nope.

Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, into the land that I am giving to them, to the people of Israel. (Joshua 1.2, ESV)

Moses my servant is dead. THEREFORE, arise and get about the mission I have for you.

What does God have for you and me today?

Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead… (Philippians 3.13, ESV)

Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; (Hebrews 7.23, NIV)

I can’t resist one more blog on Bible reading prompted by a conversation with a friend about his 3-year-old’s toilet training. Apparently, there are a lot of little-kid potties in his house, and about one of them, my friend said:

Of all the potties he doesn’t use, this type is his favorite. He uses all the potties some of the time. He’s more of a potty hobbyist. – A father talking about his 3-year-old son

The kid had also explicitly rejected a pink potty since “Pink is for girls.”

It reminds me of some believers and their preferences for Bible translations. They heartily approve of some and strongly reject others. But none of that matters if they don’t read any of them. And, more importantly, when they read, there are “no points” for reading only and certainly no points for possession only.

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them… (Deuteronomy 17.18 – 19, ESV, emphasis mine)

But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. (Matthew 7.26, MSG)

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1.22, NIV)