Lessons from Rahab

You'll have to excuse my constant blog posts about the Old Testament.  As I've said before, I teach gospel doctrine at church every Sunday, so needless to say, it's on my mind.  Plus the Old Testament is so rich and full of good, amazing stuff! Going through it this time around has been such an amazing experience.  Especially since I have been to so many of the places it talks about in there.  Truly amazing.

My lesson today was on the book of Joshua and wow there is a lot of good stuff in there! One particular point, that stuck out to me this time around, is in the story of Rahab.  Joshua needed to defeat the city of Jericho, which was walled up, so he sent over two spies to check everything out.  They were sought after by the people of Jericho and Rahab, a harlot, helped them by hiding them in her home.  In exchange for helping them, she asked that when Jericho was destroyed, the Israelites would save her and her family.  The two spies complied and swore an oath to her.  Jericho was destroyed and her family was saved.

There's a lot more to the story of Joshua and Jericho, but I particularly wanted to focus on Rahab and what we can learn from her since a) she's a woman in the Bible with a story (those are hard to come by) and b) there's a great lesson to be learned from her.

Rahab was a harlot, and therefore was probably not living the most faithful life.  The Lord, however, still saw fit to use her.  He took an imperfect person and he used her in his plan for the Israelites to conquer Jericho.  She was able to be an instrument in his hands, despite her "life of sin."  And the spies could have looked at her and said, "Yeah she's not someone we want to interact with."  But they didn't.  They accepted her help and were able to conquer Jericho because of it.

So sometimes we may feel inadequate because we are imperfect.  We may feel that we are not worthy of being an instrument in the Lord's hands.  But that simply isn't true.  And Rahab teaches us that.  The Lord knows our true potential.  He knows that we are imperfect and have flaws.  And yet he still needs us.  He still wants us to come unto Him and be perfected through Him.  And what a blessing right? If he only used perfect people, he wouldn't have anyone to use!  Anyone, and I mean anyone can be an instrument in the Lord's hands.  If we seek him and submit to His will, we can do all things through Christ.

Rahab was imperfect.  Pretty much everyone in the Bible was imperfect (except Christ of course!).  I am imperfect and you are imperfect.  And sometimes we really mess up.  And get to a point where it feels impossible to come back.  But it's never too late to come back.  And there's no such thing as being too deep in to resurface.  The Lord can and will use you, if you just let him.  And he can perfect you and make you whole.  Through the power of the atonement, we can become stronger and be used by the Lord for good.

Thank goodness for the Lord and his infinite mercy.  And thank goodness for Rahab and her story.  She plays a seemingly small part in the Old Testament, but yet there are big lessons to learn from her.