Today, many unsettling flashes of information meander across our paths through diverse avenues of media. How do we react?
Listening and watching the news, distinctly declares the aspirations of individuals asserting their rights. Many are stories with hidden agendas, crafted to try to make us feel or act a certain way. Many emotions drift around, as we try to determine what does this all mean and what is the truth.
In any given situation, two very important questions need answered.
- What is true?
- What is false?
On September 11, 2001, a terrorist attack on three areas of American soil changed how we look at news. There were many lives radically upset that day. However, the many upsets also turned hearts back to relationships with each other and God. Tremendous bonding happened in all of America. How did that news affect you?
In Joshua we see how the news of the Israelites had an effect on others.
Then Joshua secretly sent out two spies from the Israelite camp at Acacia Grove. He instructed them, “Scout out the land on the other side of the Jordan River, especially around Jericho.” So the two men set out and came to the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there that night.
But someone told the king of Jericho, “Some Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” So the king of Jericho send orders to Rahab: “Bring out the men who have come into your house, for they have come to spy out the whole land.”
Rahab had hidden the two men, but she replied, “Yes, the men were here earlier, but I didn’t know where they were from. They left the town at dusk, as the gates were about to close. I don’t know where they went. If you hurry, you can probably catch up with them.” (Actually, she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them beneath bundles of flax she had laid out.) So the king’s men went looking for the spies along the road leading to the shallow crossings of the Jordan River. And as soon as the king’s men had left, the gate of Jericho was shut.
Before the spies went to sleep that night, Rahab went up on the roof to talk with them. “I know the Lord has given you this land,” she told them. “We are all afraid of you. Everyone in the land is living in terror. For we have heard how the Lord made a dry path for you through the Red Sea when you left Egypt. And we know what you did to Sihon and Og, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan River, whose people you completely destroyed.
No wonder out hearts have melted in fear! No one has the courage to fight after hearing such things. For the Lord your God is the supreme God of the heavens above and the earth below. (Joshua 2: 1-14 NLT)
Here is the good news, God used Rahab to save His people and she became part of the lineage of Christ. She was able to decipher the truth behind the news she heard, and was able to apply that truth in the way that pleased God.
As parents, how do we react to good or bad news? Are we properly deciphering truth from non-truth? Are we thinking and praying about how God wants us to react, and what action he wants us to take? Our children are always watching how we react to everything, including what is on the radio, TV and Internet. We need to show them by our example, how to determine what is the truth, and how to seek God’s will for us based on that truth.
