Strike the ground

Don't hold back... honestly.

There’s probably a few a moments in your life when you look back in retrospect and know things could have worked out better, if you had put just a little, tiny more effort into it… #tshirt

King Joash did. And he didn't. And it cost him more than he would realise.

Over in 2 Kings 13, the double-anointed Elisha, successor of Elijah is dying. Joash reads the room and comes to him weeping, calling him "the chariots of Israel and its horsemen." An odd title, but Joash knows what's at stake. He knows who this aging, sick man is, and genuinely grieves. Elisha, even in his final days, responds, giving the king something extraordinary: a prophetic act, a moment loaded with meaning and potential. It’s a moment of encounter.

The drama unfolds before us as we read. Take the bow. Draw it, pull it back, back, back, hold it. Steady, steady… Elisha puts his bony hands over the king's hands, and engages with the moment before urging him, “take the arrows and strike the ground.”

Joash strikes it three times. Then stops. #awkward #clumsy #embarrased

Elisha is furious. This probably nearly polished him off, "You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times."

Three times. Not because God limited him. Because he limited himself.

Here's the thing. Joash wasn't apathetic. He showed up. He wept. He engaged. But when the moment came for full-on, wholehearted pursuit, he held back. And nobody told him to. That restraint came from within.

What this really means is that the ceiling on Joash's victory wasn't Syria's strength. It was his own halfheartedness in a brutally defining moment.

Leaders, this is worth sitting with. Many of you are in a ‘Joash moment’ right now. You've shown up. You're engaged. You're not walking away. But somewhere in you, there's a hesitation. A measured response to an unmeasured calling. You're striking the ground a mere three timeswhen you should be exhausting yourself doing it. God offends the mind to reveal the heart. This is such a moment.

The question isn't whether God is able. It never was. The question is whether you will give the moment what it actually demands. Yourself. #wholehearted

Elisha's hands were over Joash's hands. The Spirit of God was present and active. The victory was already seeded into the act. All it needed was a king who refused to stop.

You are that king. Don't put the arrows down. Don’t.

Believe, and expect more. Much more.

Aslan is on the move.