With a little motivation from a friend I have decided get serious about spending more time daily studying my Bible. This year I am not taking any courses, a change from the past four years. I was planning to start reading in Genesis but my Bible opened to the book of Joshua. Some may think I'm a bit overly "spiritual" but I thought I heard an inner voice that said, "It's OK if you start here instead." So I began reading.
The words spoke to me directly. I recalled a prophetic word a young woman in our church spoke to Sheldon and myself that included Joshua 1:3, "Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you...." The woman who spoke this was very zealous and happened to be on her way to be a missionary in Africa along with her husband. I didn't know exactly how this message would apply to us. At the time we were planting a new church and in the years that followed, it really did not look like we were "possessing" any land in the spiritual sense. It was a long, tough haul, with very little fruit and we eventually gave it up after nearly eight years.
Although my devotions started with a bit of a dampener, I soon began to wonder if God may still have a "territory" for me. Maybe these past years are equivalent in some way to forty years in the wilderness, and maybe I am finally going to possess something. Joshua was going to possess what had been promised to his predecessor. God's promise is not limited to the individual, I notice, and it can extend over a considerable period of time.
God tells Joshua that he will be with him and then clarifies his requirements. Several times he repeats that Joshua is to be "strong and courageous." He stresses that he is to keep the law, meditate on it, do it. Then he will prosper and be successful.
To me this looked like a timeless truth. God is interested in my "success" and in making my way "prosperous," if I meditate on his word and obey it. I long for the "place of rest" he promised to the tribes. It seems that so much of life is about striving to possess something. When do we finally sit down and enjoy what we have?
This rest is an actual physical rest when they conquer their enemies and settle into the promised land, but it is also a future rest, as spoken of in Heb. 11. Although it is an eternal rest, something we will experience with Christ in eternity, I keep thinking there is an aspect of it that we can have here and now and I long for it.
I conclude that I will have to be "strong and courageous." I will have to "step" into some new territory. I will need to keep God's word in my heart in order to obey it. God will do his part. He will be with me. He will give me success and rest.
God actually spoke to Joshua. I marvel that we have a copy of this dialogue, that God has preserved in writing his revelation to his people.
I think it is so significant that I started with this chapter at this time in my life. This is such a good place to be encouraged, "This Book of the Law shall not depart from you r mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success" (v. 8). Note, "then you shall make your way prosperous." God obviously doesn't do it all for us.
