You Cannot Stand Before Your Enemies Until…

“Rise up! Consecrate the people and say, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, for thus the Lord, the God of Israel, has said, “There are things under the ban in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the things under the ban from your midst.” Joshua 7:13

Joshua, aware of the reason for the defeat at Ai, received his next steps to address the sin in the camp of Israel.

The Lord told Joshua to tell and to have the Israelites to consecrate themselves, which meant they were to purify themselves of anything considered by the Lord to be unclean.
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Joshua was to also tell them that the Lord said there were things that were banned in their midst, and they would not be able to stand before their enemies until these things were removed.

​Think about your life. Have you ever experienced defeat, possibly repetitive defeat with the same issue or different issues, and wondered why?

Do you have known sin in your life that the Lord has convicted you of, or you have godly sorrow about, but yet you have not confessed, repented, turned from, or walked away from these things?

God is calling for you to consecrate yourself today by starting with confession and agreement with God about the very thing that causes Him grief.

After you’ve acknowledged the sin(s), repent by turning from the sin. This means that you are giving up the sin by walking away from it, even if it causes you sorrow to turn from it and abandon it. 

This is a way of consecrating yourself before the Lord, because Jesus already paid for the penalty, which would be the deserved wrath and judgment of God. You need only to restore your fellowship with the Lord if you are already a child of God.

​Once the sin is forsaken and fellowship is restored, seek God and ask Him for His direction about your consistent defeat before your enemies and how you are to proceed so that He is glorified.
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Standing victorious before your enemies is only possible with clean hands and a pure heart. 

God is merciful and kind.

When we turn from Him and embrace what He considers sinful, we experience defeat that can be used to bring us back to Him so that we do not plunge further into sin and farther away from Him.
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If you do not know the Lord, you can learn more about what it means to become a child of God here.