Touré Roberts - Hold Your Breath

All right, let’s get into it. Let’s go to Joshua chapter 6. We’re going to look at the first five verses and then examine verse 10. I want to apologize to you right now; I’m tired. I’m really tired. We were actually supposed to be on vacation today, but we had to push the vacation back a week due to the loss we suffered. This was not just a vacation that would be nice to take; this was a vacation born out of desperation. Hello, somebody! My wife and I are so tired. We have been working and traveling all year. I wrote a book this year, took two months to write it, and just finished my second book. My wife released her fourth book, and we have been traveling all around the country preaching and teaching, booking more hotels and getting on more airplanes than we can remember. I mean, we are exhausted. We moved, and moving is crazy! We’ve been dealing with contractors and vendors, and we were really looking forward to this vacation. We had planned it two months in advance, which is a miracle for us because we just don’t take vacations; we just work and work and work. We say we don’t take vacations, but we never actually do. We plan them, and then more work comes up, and we end up not going. So this time, we planned that trip months out, purchased our tickets, booked our accommodations, and had everything worked out. We needed it and were counting down the days. My wife packed, and my kid packed as well. It was all set, but then the devil is a liar! We had to push it back, so now I’m tired. I’m going to split verbs today, and I’ll be using words that you’ll just have to believe by faith. I might even make up some words, okay? I’ll probably be searching for words because I’m not my sharpest right now. But I do have a word, Amen? All right, let’s go! Pray for me, okay?

It says, «Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel. None went out, and none came in.» I find this interesting, and I think it’s relevant to you as well. There’s a point of wisdom in this, and it is this: Oftentimes, when you are closest to the breakthrough, it seems the most impossible. God was giving them Jericho, and Jericho was unusually on lockdown. Have you ever been close to something? As a matter of fact, I ought to ask you—there are some of you here right now who are very close to something, but it seems so far away. You don’t see any openings. Sometimes you can become optimistic; you can be filled with passion and enthusiasm when you can at least see a crack. If you give me a crack, I’ll get into that crack and open that thing up because that’s the type of faith I have. But they needed a different type of faith. What do you do when you don’t even see a crack in what God has promised? What this scenario taught me is that sometimes, right when you’re on the brink of something—right when it’s this close—is when it seems the most shut down. I feel God on this; I’m trying to move because this isn’t even a major point in the message, but it’s a major point in someone’s life right now. When you are the closest to it, it seems the most impossible. Who in here is facing something that, watch this, looks so dead that you’ve actually moved on? It looks so hopeless that you’re already actively engaged in Plan B. I want you to go back to Plan A because I believe you may have turned your back on something that’s shut up real tight because God is about to open it wide. It says, «Jericho is securely shut up because of the children of Israel. None went out and none came in.» In verse 2, it says, «And the Lord said to Joshua, ‘See, I have given Jericho into your hand.’» This is crazy. Just look at it for a second! What they are looking at appears impossible, yet they have a promise.