33 days, 172 dead

"So fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”

The people replied, “We would never abandon the Lord and serve other gods. For the Lord our God is the one who rescued us and our ancestors from slavery in the land of Egypt. He performed mighty miracles before our very eyes. As we traveled through the wilderness among our enemies, he preserved us. It was the Lord who drove out the Amorites and the other nations living here in the land. So we, too, will serve the Lord, for he alone is our God.”

Then Joshua warned the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy and jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you abandon the Lord and serve other gods, he will turn against you and destroy you, even though he has been so good to you.”

But the people answered Joshua, “No, we will serve the Lord!”

“You are a witness to your own decision,” Joshua said. “You have chosen to serve the Lord.”

“Yes,” they replied, “we are witnesses to what we have said.”

“All right then,” Joshua said, “destroy the idols among you, and turn your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

The people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey him alone.”

So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day at Shechem, committing them to follow the decrees and regulations of the Lord. Joshua recorded these things in the Book of God’s Instructions. As a reminder of their agreement, he took a huge stone and rolled it beneath the terebinth tree beside the Tabernacle of the Lord.

Joshua said to all the people, “This stone has heard everything the Lord said to us. It will be a witness to testify against you if you go back on your word to God.”

Then Joshua sent all the people away to their own homelands.

Key Principles Part Two

Obedience may be the doorway to intimacy, but it's not intimacy. Jesus says in John 14, if you love me, obey my commandments. He does not say, "if you love me keep my commandments and then you will be loved." Our relationship with Jesus is based in His work on the cross and through His resurrection. We obey because it's who we are, not in order to be loved.

If I bring my wife flowers and she asks me, "Why did you get these for me?", and if I respond, "Because I know you expect me to do that for you from time to time," that's a quick road to no intimacy. I get her flowers because I love her. I get her flowers because it's who I am -- I am her lover and flowers are the "obedience" that I live in because I love her. The flowers are an extension of my identity and open the doorway for intimacy which I define as spirit to spirit connection. Intimacy is primarily spiritual. Certainly there are emotional and physical outgrowths of that, but if we try to connect through either emotion or physicality first, it will always fall short of what it was meant to be.