Multitudes in the Valley of Decision
"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." — Joel 3:14
A Question Before Anything Else
There is a question underneath everything you are about to read, and it belongs in front of you now, before the first lesson properly begins.
Where do you stand in the valley of decision?
Not where your church stands. Not where your parents stood. Not where you would say you stand if someone asked you politely at a fellowship supper.
You.
Joel saw a valley crowded with people who had not yet decided — multitudes of them, standing at a fork with eternity on both sides. And he saw the day of the Lord drawing near while they stood there.
That valley is not a metaphor for someone else's neighborhood. It is the world you walk through every ordinary day.
The Call That Comes Before the Comfort
Look at what God says to His people while those multitudes stand there:
"Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong." (Joel 3:9–10)
Read that carefully, because it reverses everything we normally want.
The prophets elsewhere speak of swords beaten into plowshares — the picture of peace we all long for. Here it runs the other way. Beat your plowshares into swords. Take the instrument of your ordinary comfortable work and turn it into a weapon.
And notice who is called: let the weak say, I am strong. Not the qualified. Not the impressive. The weak, saying something that is not yet true of them, because the One calling them will make it true.
Who Will Warn Them?
The questions that follow are the hardest in this study, and there is no comfortable answer to any of them.
Who is going to warn these people in the valley of decision?
Who is going to fight for their souls?
Who is going to tell them that they do not have to serve darkness — that there is another Master who loved them enough to die for them?
Who has the faith to pick up the sword of the Lord and go to battle?
If your honest answer is someone else, someone trained, someone called to that sort of thing, then this study has already found its first work to do in you.
Point to Ponder
Joel saw multitudes standing in a valley with eternity on both sides. Most of them are people you already know.
Verse to Remember
"Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." — Joel 3:14
Question to Consider
If I had to answer honestly right now — where do I stand?
Today's Practice
Take a sheet of paper and write down the names of people you actually know who are standing in that valley. Not categories. Names.
Family members. People at your work. Neighbors. Old friends. The person who cuts your hair. The people you see every week and have never once spoken to about Jesus Christ.
Do not try to make the list impressive or complete. Write the names that come to you.
Then look at the list and ask yourself a plain question about each one: what have I actually done?
Keep this page. You will return to it many times, and by the end of this study you will pray over it differently than you can today.
Prayer
Father, I have lived a long time as though the Christian life were a private arrangement between You and me — a matter of belief and attendance and reasonable behavior.
I see the names on this page. I have known some of them for years. I have talked with them about everything except the one thing that matters, and I have told myself it was not the right moment.
Forgive me. Wake me up.
I do not yet know what I am willing to pay, and that frightens me. But I am willing to find out. Begin the work in me that needs to be done — show me who You are, teach me Your voice, and make me someone You can actually send.
Here I am. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let the weak say, I am strong. That is not a description. It is an order.