When sinners pray

I'm always impressed by strong women.  Perhaps it's because I was raised among 4 men; perhaps it's because I've been self-sufficient since high-school; perhaps it's because I've always had an innate dislike of people who constantly rely on other people to do things for them.  Whatever the reason, though, I've always really looked up to and admired them.  There is just something irresistible about them; their aura, their persona, just draws you to them, whether you like it or not.

 Rahab was an incredibly strong woman.  She staked everything - her belongings, her family, her future, even her very life - on the word of 2 men who said that their God would spare her.  The most incredible thing to me, is that it wasn't even her god that she had faith in.  She could see that the God of the Israelites was the one true God, and risked everything on that assumption.

It's astonishing to me that Rahab was not an Israelite.  Sure, she had seen God's power from afar, as she watched the people of Israel destroy every nation that stood in their way.  But Rahab was, in effect, as heathen.  And yet she prayed.  She believed.  And her prayers not only saved herself and her family; because of her faith she became one of only 5 women in the entire Bible to be listed as a part of the genealogy of Jesus.

Rahab was a woman who had not known Jesus personally, and who had been raised in a culture that was an outright enemy of all things Israelite, including their God.  Now if Rahab's prayers to the living God carried with them so much power...how much more weight could our carry, we who have Jesus living within us every single day of our lives?

Joshua 2
¹ Then Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim. “Go, look over the land,” he said, “especially Jericho.” So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.

 ² The king of Jericho was told, “Look, some of the Israelites have come here tonight to spy out the land.” ³ So the king of Jericho sent this message to Rahab: “Bring out the men who came to you and entered your house, because they have come to spy out the whole land.”

 ⁴ But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. She said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they had come from. ⁵ At dusk, when it was time to close the city gate, they left. I don’t know which way they went. Go after them quickly. You may catch up with them.” ⁶ (But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.) ⁷ So the men set out in pursuit of the spies on the road that leads to the fords of the Jordan, and as soon as the pursuers had gone out, the gate was shut.

 ⁸ Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof ⁹ and said to them, “I know that the LORD has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. ¹⁰ We have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea^[a] for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed.^{[b] 11} When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the LORD your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

 ¹² “Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that you will show kindness to my family, because I have shown kindness to you. Give me a sure sign ¹³ that you will spare the lives of my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them—and that you will save us from death.”

 ¹⁴ “Our lives for your lives!” the men assured her. “If you don’t tell what we are doing, we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the LORD gives us the land.”

 ¹⁵ So she let them down by a rope through the window, for the house she lived in was part of the city wall. ¹⁶ She said to them, “Go to the hills so the pursuers will not find you. Hide yourselves there three days until they return, and then go on your way.”

 ¹⁷ Now the men had said to her, “This oath you made us swear will not be binding on us ¹⁸ unless, when we enter the land, you have tied this scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you have brought your father and mother, your brothers and all your family into your house. ¹⁹ If any of them go outside your house into the street, their blood will be on their own heads; we will not be responsible. As for those who are in the house with you, their blood will be on our head if a hand is laid on them. ²⁰ But if you tell what we are doing, we will be released from the oath you made us swear.”

 ²¹ “Agreed,” she replied. “Let it be as you say.”

   So she sent them away, and they departed. And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

 ²² When they left, they went into the hills and stayed there three days, until the pursuers had searched all along the road and returned without finding them. ²³ Then the two men started back. They went down out of the hills, forded the river and came to Joshua son of Nun and told him everything that had happened to them. ²⁴ They said to Joshua, “The LORD has surely given the whole land into our hands; all the people are melting in fear because of us."