"Irreplaceable" February 16 Readings: Deuteronomy 30-34

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Today's Reading - Deuteronomy 30-34


As you read this, I will hopefully be in transit from Sioux City to southern Senegal. I am writing this a week before I leave and am hoping to be able to get all the devotionals written. However, I do have at the very least have the passages set up. If I am not able to get a devotional written for EVERY day, you might just have to write one for yourself!

Background


Today's reading is about transitions. Moses has led Israel from the moment God sent him from the Burning Bush and now it is his time to die. Joshua has been beside him for 40 years and it is his time to take over. This is going to be tough, but God guides his people through.

Devotional - Irreplaceable


I did not understand why God was moving me from the church I thought I would retire from across the state of Iowa. But it all became clear at a meeting a few days after I resigned when I was trying to help some of the leaders of the church make some plans for the future and one of them said,
Now that you are leaving, Dave, this church will fall apart. 
That sounds like a compliment, but it is an indictment. A church that rests on me is no church at all. "The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord." God was moving me, I understood, so that people might learn to lean on him and not rest on me.

It is a normal thing for people to trust their leaders if those leaders are honorable. But that becomes a temptation when those people begin to trust IN their leaders, to transpose their faith in God to a faith in the people who were supposed to lead them to God.

When that happens, a leadership transition is traumatic. But when God is in control, one leader gives way to another. There is only one person whose presence is indispensable to the life of a church and that is the one who shed his blood to purchase that church and to give it life.

"Mose my servant is dead." That's how the book of Joshua begins. But then God begins to work through Joshua and a new chapter in Israel's history is written.

Good leadership is crucial, but let us never forget that the foundation of the church is Christ and that his presence is the only one which must never change.

Thank you, Lord, for people who have led me and guided me. But I also thank you that you make everything new and that you raise up a Joshua when Moses fades away. 

Think and Pray


Do you have a healthy respect for the leaders of your church?
Do you also remember that it is not your leaders, but your Savior, who is the foundation?

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