Strong + Courageous

This week for She Shares Truth, we're talking about Joshua 1:8-9.  Joshua is one of my favorite books of the Bible.  I love how we see God speak into Joshua's life throughout the book.  First God tells Joshua to be strong & courageous a few times, & then Joshua's men tell him the same thing.  There's no way that was a coincidence.  God was speaking to Joshua through his own men.  I love that we see how God encouraged him.

As Christians, especially Christians in the United States, I think one area where we are commonly found lacking is in really knowing Scripture.  Most other religions know whatever their "book of instruction" is backwards & forwards, & sometimes know the Bible better than we do as well.  We take for granted what a blessing it is to have God's holy, inspired Word available so readily.  From where I'm sitting in my living room I have five Bibles in sight.  I know there are at least four more in my bedroom, & others scattered throughout the house.  Anyone who has a smartphone can have multiple apps with multiple translations of the Bible with just the click of a button.  Anyone who owns a computer has the whole Bible at her fingertips.  It's there, & we don't utilize it like we should.  Christians in closed or impoverished countries don't have all of this so handy, yet we don't even realize the power of what we hold in our hands.

We find these verses in Joshua just three days before they were to enter the Promised Land.  Talk about a light at the end of the tunnel...this land that God had promised to their ancestors so long ago was so close, yet they still had to trust God in order to get them there.  They were about to cross a river on dry ground & see the walls of Jericho crumble.  God was making a way, but He still called them to meditate & pray.

I think meditation, prayer, & spending time in Scripture, is much less about what we're doing, & more about the fact that we're doing it.  Not that talking & listening to God, & reading the Bible isn't important because of course it is!  But it's about our drawing near to Him.  It's about us putting forth the effort in our relationships with Him.  God already knew how He was going to get His people into the Promised Land.  He knew the battles that lie ahead & the cities that were yet to conquer.  But He called His people to look to Him.  Trust Him.  Rely on Him.  Going into these last days before entering the Promised Land, He wanted them inundated with His Word.  When this is where they were spiritually as they entered the Promised Land, how could they not give all the glory to God?

I think this is kind of like in school when you had a test.  You should be studying a little bit every day so you don't have to cram all at once, but even if you do that, the night before the test you're probably going to spend several hours studying, right?  We should be in God's Word every day, but when we know we have something big coming up, our hearts should be soaked in Scripture.  The Israelites knew what they were about to face; God called them to recite Scripture to themselves, to write it on their hearts.  This was His way of preparing them spiritually, just as it's still applicable today.  We can't be prepared for the day or the week or month if we are not spending time in His Word.