Guest author, Princella Smith, asks if you are strong enough to break down your wall of Jericho.

 

We all have a Jericho in our lives to conquer, and many times there is a wall of rejection preventing us from reaching that goal. The Book of Joshua teaches us to follow God’s spiritual strategy to overcome our natural obstacles. This requires patience, submission, focus, and an understanding of God’s divine numerical system—particularly the number seven. Secularists deem the number seven as “lucky”, but it bears a deeper spiritual significance. It is His divine number of completion. I cannot predict that in seven days, months, or years you will receive an abundance of blessings, but I know that when God counts to the seventh time in your life, a significant change will occur. It may be two days or five years, but on God’s spiritual seven in your life, you will be fit for the fight ahead of you. You will conquer the Jericho in your life.

 

How I wish my fellow members of the millennial generation could grasp this concept! So many of us have not activated the inner strength that our parents and grandparents used because we never endured the types of hardships they faced. Too many of us want things handed to us, and we crumble at the first sign of pressure. In Joshua Chapter 6, God gave Joshua and the Israelites specific instructions to march around the city wall of Jericho seven times. Verse 16 says: “And the seventh time IT HAPPENED…” The wall fell down, and the Israelites took the city. Just as the Israelites silently marched around Jericho’s wall, so should we “hush and walk” around our wall of obstacles with a godly anticipation that our Father is counting and will eventually reach the number seven. No complaining. Just walk, and when it’s time to fight, IT WILL HAPPEN. Our wall will fall.

 

I have urged fellow millennials to sit down with our elder relatives to ask them questions about their childhoods. It is amazing the stories they never tell unless asked. My paternal grandmother, Martha Hearn, told me an unforgettable story about my great-great-grandfather, and her grandfather, Jesse James Taylor. One day in 1937, when Jim Crow laws were in full effect, Jesse had enough of this abusive system. Jesse’s boss, Mr. Stamps, threatened to whip Jesse with an axe handle over something related to his farm work. Jesse was having none of that. He gave Mr. Stamps the beating of his life. Knowing that the beating of a white man by a black man meant an immediate death sentence, Jesse fled the field to say a quick goodbye to his family and head for Missouri. Martha remembers: “He squatted down to catch me with both hands and said: ‘Tell your mama I am gone, and I’ll write her.’ I was only five years old at the time. Papa kissed my forehead, and I never saw him again.” Jesse eventually returned to Arkansas to get his wife, my great-great-grandmother Magnolia Taylor, as well as his sons. He left my great-grandmother, Annie (Martha’s mother), because she felt safe with her husband in Arkansas. Annie taught Martha and her sister to never travel alone and to never reveal where their Papa Taylor went. Mr. Stamps would stop Martha and her sister on their way to the market as they walked past his office to go downtown.

 

“Ain’t you Taylor’s daughter?”

“Granddaughter, sir.”

“You know where Taylor is?”

“No, sir.”

 

Martha and her sister never told, and Jesse was never caught. Jesse escaped the brutality of Mr. Stamps and was as close to being a “free man” as he could have been in those days. I believe that this moment in my great-great-grandfather’s life was his spiritual seven. God calls us to be humble—not weak. Jesse fought, and he won.

 

The seventh Hebrew letter, Zayin, means “sword”. Its root word, zan, means “nourishment or food”. In classical Hebrew, Zayin is the letter Vav with a crown on its head. Since Vav means “man”, Zayin represents the Man Jesus as our Protector and King with a two-edged sword feeding His sheep with the nourishment of life. The number seven is as powerful for our lives now as it was in Jericho thousands of years ago.

 

Princella Smith is a humanitarian, political strategist, and radio talk show host.

www.princellasmith.us