Walking in Faith: The Journey of Patience and Action
As we step into 2026, we find ourselves continuing through our ‘season of waiting’ as a church fellowship. After saying farewell to our minister, Tim Carter at the end of 2024, we've journeyed through a full year trusting God to bring us the right person to lead us forward as a church. It's a time that calls for patience, yet also for active faith.
It seems to me, that the story of Joshua at Jericho speaks powerfully into this moment in our history. Imagine receiving God's battle plan: march around the city walls once a day for six days, then seven times on the seventh day. No battering rams, no siege towers, or weaponry of any kind, just walking and trusting. To any military strategist, it must have seemed utterly bizarre.
Yet Joshua and his people did something remarkable—they patiently obeyed. Day after day, they rose early, organized themselves, and walked. They didn't sit passively in their camp waiting for the walls to fall. They were actively engaged in God's plan, even when nothing visible was happening. Six days of circling with no results. Six days when doubt could have crept in. Six days when they might reasonably have questioned whether they'd heard God correctly. But they kept walking.
This is our calling too. Waiting on God doesn't mean doing nothing. It means actively seeking Him in our daily lives, in our worship, in our fellowship together, and in our service to our wider community. It means continuing to pray, to gather together, to support one another, to reach out to our neighbourhood. It means trusting that God is working amongst us and through us even when we can't see the outcome yet.
Joshua's army had to complete every circuit—not just six days and think "that’s close enough," but the full measure God required of them. Then, on that seventh day, when they'd marched seven times and the priests sounded the trumpets, they shouted—and the walls fell.
God's timing is perfect, even when it stretches our patience. His ways may seem unconventional, even peculiar to our limited human mindset, but they are always purposeful. Like Joshua, we're called to be faithful in the daily walk, to remain obedient to what we know God has asked of us right now, and to trust that He is orchestrating something for Brighton Road that He will reveal to us when the time is right.
So as we journey together through 2026, let's embrace both patience and action. Let's continue to serve our community with joy, to worship with expectation, to pray with persistence, and to support one another with love. Let's keep "circling Jericho"—doing that faithful work God has placed before us, trusting that in His perfect timing, He will bring breakthrough.
The walls of Jericho didn't fall because of human strength or clever strategy. They fell because God's people walked in obedient faith. Let's do the same, confident that God is already preparing the next chapter of BRBC’s story.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Ken Carter