When We Blame God First
"Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face?" — Joshua 7:10
A Very Human Response
When the beaten army came back from Ai, Joshua did what any of us would have done.
"Then Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the LORD until evening… And Joshua said, 'Alas, Lord GOD, why have You brought this people over the Jordan at all; to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? Oh, that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan!'" (Joshua 7:6–7)
Read that again slowly. Every element of our own crisis reaction is there.
Blame God. Why have You brought this people over the Jordan at all?
Assume the worst about His intentions. To destroy us?
Romanticize the past. Oh, that we had been content, and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan.
Weep and wail rather than examine. He lay on his face until evening.
Joshua was a great man. This was not his finest hour, and Scripture records it without softening.
Our Version of the Same Speech
Something goes wrong and our first instinct is to look upward accusingly. Lord, how could You let this happen to me?
Then we call everyone we can think of and ask them to pray. Then we grieve the version of our life that existed before the trouble came, and we quietly wonder whether following God was worth it.
What we almost never do — in that first hour, or that first week — is ask whether the problem might be with us.
The human race has not changed a bit since Joshua.
God's Answer
Notice how the Lord responds. There is no consolation in it, and there is no cruelty either.
"So the LORD said to Joshua: 'Get up! Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed My covenant which I commanded them.'" (Joshua 7:10–11)
Get up. Stop the grief posture. There is nothing here to mourn — there is something here to find.
God was not offended by Joshua's confusion. He was ending it. He answered the question Joshua had not thought to ask, and He answered it with complete specificity: here is what happened, here is who did it, here is how you will deal with it.
That is how God treats a leader who is genuinely seeking Him. He does not leave him lying there.
The Better First Question
There is a discipline worth building for the rest of your life. When trouble arrives, before you compose your complaint, ask one question first:
"Lord, is there anything in me?"
Not with morbid self-accusation. Not assuming every hardship is your fault, because it is not. Simply asking first, before the protest, whether there is something to see.
Sometimes the answer is a clear no, and you can grieve or endure with a clean conscience. Sometimes the answer arrives immediately and you realize you have been petitioning heaven about a door you left open yourself.
Either way, you have lost nothing by asking. And you may have saved yourself years.
Point to Ponder
Our first reactions to trouble are self-pity and blame. God's first response is a question we should have asked ourselves.
Verse to Remember
"Search me, O God, and know my heart… and see if there is any wicked way in me." — Psalm 139:23–24
Question to Consider
When trouble hits, how long does it take me to ask whether the problem might be in me — if I ever ask at all?
Today's Practice
Recall your most recent crisis, large or small. Reconstruct your actual sequence of responses in order. Be honest.
Did you blame? Panic? Call people? Rehearse the past? Where in that sequence did you ask God to search you — and did you ever?
Now write yourself a short protocol for the next time. Three or four steps, in order, beginning with: "Lord, is there anything in me?"
Put it somewhere you will find it when you are not thinking clearly. That is the day it will matter.
Prayer
Father, I confess that my first instinct in trouble is to protest and my second is to grieve. Asking You to search me comes much later, if it comes at all.
Forgive me for the accusations I have made against Your character. You have never dealt falsely with me. Not once.
Teach me to ask the better question first. When the next blow comes — and it will come — let my first words be an invitation for You to search me rather than a complaint about what You allowed.
And thank You, Lord, that when Joshua asked wrongly, You answered anyway. Thank You that You do not leave Your people lying on the ground. In Jesus' name. Amen.
Get up. There is something here to find, not only something to mourn.