Many of us have had this happen with GPS. You are driving a road you know well, feeling sure of your route, when the device suddenly says, “Rerouting.” Your first reaction is to resist. You know this road. You have driven it so many times. Why would you need to take a different route?
Life can reroute us as well. Sometimes a doctor gives you unexpected news. A relationship ends in a way you never saw coming. A job ends suddenly. A loved one needs hospice care. Suddenly, your future looks nothing like what you expected. In those moments, we all face the same question: Will we trust what we know, or will we trust the One who knows?
This question is at the center of one of the most powerful moments in the Old Testament.
Standing at the Edge of the Impossible
In Joshua 3, Israel faces this exact situation. They stand at the edge of the Jordan River during flood season, with the water overflowing and rushing by. Behind them are forty years in the wilderness. Ahead is the promised land. Between them is a river that seems impossible to cross.
To make things even more uncertain, their leader who had guided them through every challenge was gone. Moses, the only leader most of them knew, had died. Joshua was new. The way forward was new. The land was unknown.
Joshua 3:4 says, “You have not traveled this way before.” This is more than just a comment about geography. It is a spiritual truth that everyone faces at some point. There will be times when nothing in your past has prepared you for what is ahead. The diagnosis is new. The grief is new. The uncertainty is new. In those moments, it is tempting to go back to what is familiar, even if that means returning to the wilderness.
God Brings You to the Impossible on Purpose
Here is something worth considering about the Israelites standing at that flooded river: God knew exactly what the Jordan looked like. He was not surprised by the flood season. He did not miscalculate. He brought them there intentionally.
God will sometimes bring you to the impossible because he wants to demonstrate that he is God and you are not. If you could solve it yourself, you would not need him. If the situation had an obvious human solution, the credit would go to human ingenuity. But when you are standing at the edge of something that cannot be explained, something that has no reasonable path forward, that is precisely where God tends to show up in ways that leave no room for any other explanation.
The Israelites stood at that river for three days. Three days of staring at the impossible. Some of you know what that feels like. You are in the waiting room of an impossible situation right now, looking at something that has no clear resolution. That waiting is not wasted. It is part of the process of understanding just how much you need the God you say you serve.
Follow the Presence, Not the Pattern
Before the Israelites crossed, Joshua gave them an instruction that carries profound weight: consecrate yourselves, because the Lord will do wonders among you tomorrow. Before anything happened on the outside, God required something on the inside. Cleansing. Surrender—preparation of the heart.
This principle holds in every generation. God wants to work in you before he works in front of you. When life reroutes you into unfamiliar territory, the first response should not be panic or problem-solving. It should be a return to God’s presence. Psalm 23 reminds us that even in the darkest valleys, the Lord is our shepherd. But valleys have a way of pulling our eyes away from the one leading us through them.
Joshua also told the people to keep the ark of the covenant in their sight, staying back far enough that everyone could see it clearly. The ark represented God’s presence. The instruction was simple: keep God in your vision. When the obstacle is overwhelming, when the situation is unfamiliar, when fear is loud, keep your eyes on his presence.
A New Method, the Same God
When Israel had faced an impassable body of water before, at the Red Sea, Moses stretched out his staff, and the water parted before anyone stepped in. But at the Jordan, God gave different instructions. The priests carrying the ark were told to step into the water first. The miracle would not come before the step of faith. It would come in response.
This distinction matters. God did not change who he was, but he changed how he worked. The same miracle was accomplished differently, through a different leader, for a different generation. Just because God moves differently than he did before does not mean he is absent. It means he is doing something new.
Isaiah 43:19 speaks of God doing a new thing, making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The same God who stopped the Red Sea also stopped the Jordan. He did it differently.
The Stones You Are Supposed to Tell About
After Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground, God instructed Joshua to have twelve men each carry a stone from the riverbed and build a monument on the other side. The purpose was explicit: when your children ask what these stones mean, you tell them. You tell them what God did. You tell them about the impossible road and the God who made a way through it.
Every person reading this has stones. There are moments in your story that you cannot fully explain, situations that resolved in ways that defy logic, relationships that were restored when they should have been finished, health that returned when the prognosis said otherwise, provision that appeared when there was no visible source. Those are your stones.
The question is whether you are telling anyone about them. The world around you is filled with people standing at their own flooded rivers, staring at their own impossible situations, wondering if anyone or anything is big enough to help them through. Your story, the road you never expected to travel and the God who walked it with you, is exactly what someone near you needs to hear.
You have never traveled this way before. But you do not travel it alone, and you do not travel it without purpose. Trust the One who knows the way, and then tell everyone what he did when you got to the other side.
Thoughts from Pastor Toney 