God Goes Before and Fights

Long before tired travellers reach a campsite, someone has to choose it, often in the dark. Today's promise is built on that picture.

Moses first spoke these words at Kadeshbarnea, to people who had just heard that the cities ahead were "great and walled up to heaven" and that giants lived there. Everything he says is about who goes first: "The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you." Three verses later he explains what "goeth before you" had meant for them: "Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day." God had gone out ahead of them like a scout in the dark, choosing the campsite before the worn-out people got there.

So the promise is that the ground you are dreading has already been walked on by God. Moses says, "he shall fight for you," and notice what that admits: there is a fight, and it is real. The verse never says the hard thing in front of you will be easy. It tells you who goes in first.

So think of the hard conversation or task waiting for you, the one you have already lost forty times in your head. You will still have to face it. What changes is that God is already standing there by the time you arrive, just as He stood at every campsite He chose for His people.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 347 is Not In Vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna