Description
Be Strong and Courageous
This episode reflects on Joshua 1:9 to encourage believers with God’s command to be strong and… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
Do we realize how much God loves us, my friends? Let’s meditate today on something that God said to Joshua to reassure and encourage him, which can reassure and encourage us too. Joshua 1:9, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
Let’s meditate on this together through three questions. The first question: What is God saying to me through this?
We can read these words, can’t we, as if God is speaking them directly to us, which He is through His word. God is saying, first of all, he’s commanded us, “Have I not commanded you?” Well, yes, He has. He’s commanded us to put our faith in His Son, Jesus.
And then He says, “Be strong and courageous.” My goodness, do you always feel strong and courageous? I certainly don’t. But He’s asking us, isn’t He, to lean into Him for that strength. When I feel weak, then His strength is revealed through us.
He says, “Don’t be frightened. Don’t be dismayed.” Why should we be neither frightened nor dismayed? Because we know our eternal destiny is secure and because we know that our God walks with us every hour of every day.
As He continues, “For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” What does that truth mean to us? It means that we genuinely are never alone, even when we feel we are. We don’t always feel God’s presence. In fact, for some of us, we rarely feel God’s presence, but we can’t rely on those feelings to guide us.
What we can rely on is the truth of God’s Word, the truth of our experience, the truth of history, which shows us that God does not leave His people without hope. He is always with us. He’s providing for us. He’s loving us. He’s cherishing us. And He provokes that same response to Him, that we love and cherish Him, so that we walk together in relationship.
Question two: Is there a warning to note? In this passage, is there anything that we should be careful about?
Well, implicit in what God says to Joshua is that we can trust God. He will always be with us. He strengthens us and supports us. So what is the warning? The warning is that if we lose our trust, we will go astray. Now, God is gracious and he will be faithful to us even when we are not faithful to him.
But we are warned, aren’t we, not to disbelieve God. It’s to our disadvantage. It’s actually bad for us when we stop believing in God. It’s bad for us when we walk in fear and doubt.
That fear, that doubt is like a poison inside us. It damages us. And this, as a loving Father, is something that God doesn’t want for us.
So let us take this warning. We need not be frightened. We need not be dismayed. God is with us and for us. And we can have full confidence in him.
Question three: How does this reflect Jesus?
When you think about the life and the walk of Jesus on this earth, do you think of him as someone who was strong and courageous? Absolutely. He faced a cruel and vicious death willingly, knowing that the reason he did this, to win souls, was sufficient reason; knowing that to obey God was everything to him.
He was not frightened and dismayed to the point that he rejected the destiny that he and his Father and the Holy Spirit had agreed for him. He represented the assurance that God is with us because he was Emmanuel, God with us. So based on the command and in obedience to his Father, he lived an obedient and righteous life, showing us how we can do that too, because the Holy Spirit of God, the same power that conquered the grave is now living and working in us.
This passage is so encouraging, isn’t it? We can meditate on it more. Let’s read it one more time. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
The Lord my God is with me wherever I go.
