WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV). Praise God that he doesn’t use perfect people, but weak people like us to fulfil his plans. Unlikely hero Rahab is hardly a role model for us. The book of Joshua doesn’t beat about the bush: the spies take refuge in a brothel; Rahab is a prostitute; she’s also a liar. When the king’s men come to her house to arrest the spies she tells a bare-faced lie to get rid of them. So she violates at least two of the commandments God gave to Joshua’s predecessor Moses. Spiritual insight But what marks her out from the rest of the people in Jericho is her sense that the God of Israel is at work in a powerful way (see vs 9–11): while the rest of the city shares her fear, she knows ‘that the LORD has given [you] this land’ and that he ‘rules heaven and earth’. It’s that spiritual insight, rather than her behaviour, which marks her out from the crowd. Rahab gives us ample evidence that our God really can use anyone, and that he shows neither partiality nor favouritism (Acts 10:34). There really is no one who cannot find themselves within the scope of his grace and plan. Respond: Pray for the most unlikely person you know to come to make the same acknowledgement as Rahab: ‘the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below’ (v 11, NIV). http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-02-01