Adventures in Bible Reading

KJ has been teaching through Habakkuk in Sunday School and finished the book with Chapter 3 this past Sunday.  In the first part of the chapter Habakkuk is reminding himself and the people of Israel of how majestic and powerful God is and all the mighty acts He worked in their behalf.  Verse 11 says, "Sun and moon stood in their places...".  KJ mentioned that Habakkuk may have been referring to the incident when God made the sun stand still in the book of Joshua, and we talked about how what probably happened is God made the earth stop spinning.  Talk about time standing still.

I went back to the passage in Joshua 10 later, and it's pretty amazing.  This God is someone to get excited about!

Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD

delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel,

and he said in the sight of Israel,

"O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley of Aijalon."

So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,

until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.

Is it not written in the book of Jashar?

[Yeah, I bet some people wrote that down. Right??]

And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not

hasten to go down for about a whole day.

There was no day like that before it or after it,

[I'll say!]

when the LORD listened to the voice of a man;

for the LORD fought for Israel.

- Joshua 10:12-14 - 

The earth stood still.  For about a whole day.  Because Joshua prayed that it would.  Talk about an audacious prayer request.  The Lord fought for Israel, and Joshua believed that, had full confidence in that.  Obviously.

2013 has been a year of more prayer for me, realizing that God has graciously chosen this means of fellowship with His people, this means of allowing us to see Him act, and it has been sweet.  And I've grown in not thinking that anything is too big to ask for or anything too hard for God.  The earth stood still, suspended in space, for an entire day.  Apparently the moon, too.  I can have confidence in a God like that.

P.S.  I'm going to assume I don't have to add a lot of caveats about the kinds of things we ask for and the motives behind them.  I think fellowship with Christ through His Word and prayer realigns our desires to His.