Praying Down Walls
There’s an expression in English: “to be painted into a corner.”
Imagine painting the floor of a room but then realizing that you have
wound up in a corner and cannot get out—except by walking over the
fresh paint. You have to stay there until it dries!
Sometimes our faith seems to paint us into a corner. We arrive at a situa
tion, and, like the wet paint on the floor, our faith “traps” us. We look at the
situation, and either we have to reject God, faith, and everything we have
believed in, or our faith compels us to believe what appears impossible.
God brought the Israelites to a corner. After they had wandered for
40 years in the wilderness, God did not lead His people to empty,
peaceful grasslands. God led them to one of the most strongly forti-
fied cities in the whole area. Then they had to walk around Jericho in
silence for six days. On the seventh day, God told them to shout—and
that shouting, together with the trumpets, would bring victory.
Read Joshua 5:13–6:20. What is God trying to teach the Israelites?
Shouting loudly was not going to cause vibrations to trigger the walls
to collapse. When God called the Israelites to “shout,” it was the same
type of shouting that David writes about in Psalm 66: “Shout for joy to
God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glori-
ous!” (Ps. 66:1, 2, NIV). This shouting was praise! After six days of
looking at the huge walls, they must have concluded that they hadn’t a
chance of breaking them down themselves.
How does this idea help us understand the meaning of Hebrews 11:30?
When God is on the verge of doing something new in our lives, He
may bring us to a Jericho, for He may need to teach us that the
power to triumph does not come in our own strength and strate-
gies. Everything we need comes from outside of ourselves. So, no
matter what is in front of us, no matter how insurmountable it
may seem, our role is to praise God—the Source of everything we
need. This is faith in action.
