Following God can be baffling at times. What seems so reasonable, so intuitive to us is often the very thing God does not want us to do. Or He asks us to do things we’d never consider doing under normal circumstances.

Our confusion stems from the time we spent in the world before we knew Christ. There, we were schooled in the flesh and taught how to approach life in the strength of our own abilities, understanding, and backup systems. It’s tough to adjust when we enter God’s kingdom through new birth. Suddenly we’re brought into a whole new way of living and thinking.

This conflict between flesh and spirit is evident throughout the Bible as God tries to re-school His people to trust in the strength of His arm, not their own. Even after entrusting our lives to Jesus, we still worry and fret as we consider our resources and how frail they seem in the face of life’s challenges, forgetting that He has ample resources for anything we face.

I like how C. S. Lewis reflected on this struggle of faith. “I suppose living from day to day (‘take no thought for the morrow’) is precisely what we have to learn—though the Old Adam in me sometimes murmurs that if God wanted me to live like the lilies of the field, I wonder He didn’t give me the same lack of nerves and imagination as they enjoy! Or is that just the point, the precise purpose of this Divine paradox and audacity called Man—to do with a mind what other organisms do without it?”

Jesus’ declaration to His disciples was “Have faith in God.” (Mark 11:22) This was not a new concept introduced by Jesus. Throughout the Old Testament, God sought to teach His people how to abandon their usual props and approach life with an unflinching confidence in Him. “Look to me,” He says through the prophet Isaiah, “and be saved.” But sadly, over and over again, Israel looked at everything else but their Redeemer for their security and help—wealth, physical strength, well-trained armies, treaties with neighboring countries, mediums, false prophets, and pagan idols … everything God warned them not to trust in because only He could keep them safe and deliver them in times of trouble.

But I can’t be too hard on the Israelites. I have to ask myself: What is my default response to things that threaten my security? What is yours? Do we, even as Christians, trust in the arm of flesh long before we think to ask God for help? Is He our first source of help, or our last resort?

In Joshua 5 we read the account of what happened following the successful crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It’s one of those counter intuitive moments in Israel’s history that’s hard for us to understand at first. Many years before, they’d been disobedient in not trusting God to go in and take the territory under Moses. Looking at the situation from a natural perspective, they’d been reluctant to attempt an attack against occupants who looked like giants and lived in well-fortified cities. How could they possibly succeed against those odds?

Indeed, they couldn’t … in their own strength. But God wasn’t asking them to conquer the Promised Land on their own. He promised to be their strength and their deliverer. All they needed to do was be obedient, follow His instructions, and trust that what He had promised, He would do.

It was too late for that first generation, but now here they were: the next generation, ready to follow Joshua into the land. They’d already seen God do some mighty miracles on their behalf—drying up the Jordan while they passed over during flood season, for one. They were on a roll. Finally, things were coming together. They sensed it: certain victory. Now was the time to do business and conquer those heathen nations.

Then the unthinkable happened, one of those moments when what God commanded made no sense whatsoever. The Lord told Joshua to make flint knives and circumcise the men and boys who had been born in the wilderness after the Exodus, the entire male population. The fighters who were ready to take on the giants in the land, the army that was supposed to keep the nation safe from attack. All these men were compromised there at Gibeath-haaraloth (the name means “hill of foreskins”), just inside enemy territory.

Can you imagine what they must have been thinking (and maybe even saying)? “Are you sure about this, Joshua? Shouldn’t we be doing some training for battle while we wait, rather than taking ourselves out of the game? Could this possibly be God’s will for us, to put ourselves in such a vulnerable position? What if some of our enemies hear about what we’ve done? We’ll be sitting ducks! How long will it take us to heal up? We’re wasting precious time here! We could have conquered a city or two by now…”

Everything they knew about worldly combat and victory confirmed it was a disastrous plan. But here’s where they had to trust God and believe that He knows best. Rather than rebelling, to a man (as far as we know) they submitted to God’s command to be circumcised as a sign of their allegiance to Him. And God took care of the results. No enemy army came by to take advantage. They had time to heal up. They were not destroyed. Everyone in camp was kept safe from harm while the men were unable to lift a hand to defend them. What a picture of the rewards of trusting and obeying! It was oh so counter intuitive, but it worked.

Some of you may be grossed out to think about all this going on in the desert, without anesthetic or sterile conditions. But try to ignore the graphic details of the scene and focus on the spiritual picture here, a picture that can speak volumes to us as we adventure with God. Before they were ready to receive the blessings of the Promised Land the Israelites needed to be reminded that God was their supply and their strength. In themselves, they didn’t have sufficient power or wisdom to get the job done. But as they let Him lead them, they could be confident that He would enable them to conquer their powerful enemies.

Think about how they took Jericho, the first city they faced in the new land. Was it by great military strategy or strength? No, God had them march around the city for several days, trusting Him as they blew their horns and shouted when He told them to. Pretty counter intuitive to the world’s way of thinking and acting, right? Yet this is how they overthrew the most fortified and impenetrable city of that region. In weakness they were strong. God’s arm and strength, not their own, saved them and brought victory.

Crossing the Jordan River and conquering Jericho were awesome events. No doubt they inspired great faith in the Israelites for a time. But, as we see later on in Joshua, these events by themselves weren’t enough to wean the people away from trusting in themselves. Soon they were going their own way, disobeying the clear commands of God, and experiencing defeat at places far weaker than Jericho had been. Why hadn’t the amazing things they’d experienced kept them from rebelling and reverting to the flesh?

The reason, it appears, is they still didn’t fully trust the God they were following. As Oswald Chambers comments, “Experience is never the ground of our trust, it is the gateway to the One Whom we trust.” Our faith must be in the One who promises to be our strength and to win our battles for us.

Is there new territory you need to enter and conquer? Is there a spiritual challenge you sense you are ill-equipped to tackle and so you hold back from it in fear? Are things not working for you even though you are giving your best effort to gain success?

If so, maybe it’s time to stop everything and, like the Israelites at Gibeath-haaraloth, trust God in a frightening new way that seems to compromise all your own resources and human abilities. It may mean humbling yourself, suspending your own efforts to make things happen, and seeking His wisdom and strength through prayer and the counsel of His Word.

For the Hebrew male, circumcision meant identification with God. It was a picture for all who would trust and follow Him wholeheartedly. To trust Him alone means we must let our flesh—our self efforts and worldly practices—go, be cut off, so we no longer trust in ourselves. All of us had to submit to spiritual circumcision when we accepted Jesus as our Savior. Here’s how Paul explained the process to the Colossians: “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ.”

Circumcision, whether physical or spiritual, only needs to be done once. But the implications of it go on and on in the lives of God’s people. In each new challenge we face, we must choose whether we will go God’s way or trust in our worldly wisdom and the strength of our flesh. Like the Israelites under

Joshua, we can rebel against the leadership of God’s Spirit in our lives. And when we go our own way, we suffer the defeats that inevitably come. But when we recognize our error and repent, asking Him to come and deliver us by His mighty strength, we are restored to a place of spiritual rest and victory.

How much do we trust Him? Are we willing to follow His clear commands even when doing so makes us feel vulnerable and look ridiculous in the eyes of the world? Those flint knives couldn’t have been comfortable, but they did accomplish the desired end. The flesh was cut off and the men went forward into the toughest challenges they had faced since leaving Egypt in God’s strength, not their own. It’s a beautiful picture for us as we struggle to trust in Christ’s strength and to follow Him wholeheartedly.

Submitting to God’s way of doing things will often seem counter intuitive to us. We may think we’re too busy fighting to stop and ask for His direction. But it is through the process of humbling ourselves that we are exalted by God (James 4:10). In our weakness He is our strong deliverer. As King David learned firsthand: “God is my helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life. He has delivered me from every trouble, and my eye has looked in triumph on my enemies” (Psalm 54:4, 7).

“Battle songs” have lost favor in the church in recent decades. We rarely sing them anymore, but I’d like to end this devotional with verses from two of them (“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” and “Soldiers of Christ, Arise.”) They express so well the importance of trusting in His strength and not the arm of the flesh … even when it makes no sense at all to our natural minds.

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