Devotional 31 July 2025

Forty years had passed since the Exodus. The generation that had walked through the Red Sea was gone. Their children (those who had grown up in the wilderness, sustained by manna and stories of God’s power) were now the ones called to take possession of the Promised Land. Their first test? March silently around the walled city of Jericho for seven days, trusting that God would bring the walls down.

What an unusual command. No swords drawn. No siege weapons. Just footsteps of obedience. But by faith, those walls fell.

This second generation of Israelites stands as a testimony to the kind of faith that not only remembers what God has done, but presses forward into what God has promised. They inherited the blessing of their parents’ deliverance, but they had to walk in obedience for themselves.

We, too, are inheritors. We live in a world deeply shaped by the ripple effects of the Gospel. Ideas like human dignity, compassion, and justice have been championed because Christ came. Yet with time, blessings can become background noise. The miraculous can start to feel mundane. We can become like those Israelites who found manna boring and started longing for Egypt.

Ecclesiastes warns us: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). God has not called us to nostalgia, but to obedience (Philippians 3:14). Every generation must rise up in faith and fight its battles. The mission of God continues. There are still walls to fall, walls of unbelief, injustice, sin, despair, pride, and fear.

We do not bring them down by strength or strategy, but by faith. By walking when God says walk. By trusting when the world says turn back (Proverbs 3:5-6). By proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, in whom every stronghold is defeated.

Let us remember the blessings we have received, and step forward in obedience, trusting that every wall will fall to the glory of His name.

The second generation Israelites still speak as witnesses to a faith that presses onward to the promises of God. May we have ears to hear.