Day One: Are you ready for an upgrade?
Every warrior needs a cause to fight for. As we start this study of God’s repeated command to Joshua to be “bold and courageous”, we know that God’s words were to encourage him on his mission. That mission? To take a group of over 1 million wandering nomads, whose last 400 years of history as a nation, was slavery, across an un-crossable flooded river, into a land of giants and remove them from the land and to take possession of it. No wonder he needed to hear those words more than once! God had promised the Children of Israel, an UPGRADE. He had miraculously freed them from slavery and had given them a promise of a land they could call their own.
For the land you are about to enter and take over is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you planted your seed and made irrigation ditches with your foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 Rather, the land you will soon take over is a land of hills and valleys with plenty of rain—12 a land that the Lord your God cares for. He watches over it through each season of the year!
God has promised you an UPGRADE too! He has more for you in your future than you have ever experienced in your past, even if in your opinion your past has still been good. Notice that He tells them that this land is NOT a land that you have to work hard to water and cultivate yourself. NO, this land is a land that GOD himself waters. It is a land supplied by the rain of grace.
But we have to WANT the upgrade, we have to SEE the promise. Can I ask you to spend a moment today reflecting on, or asking God for, a promise for your future and asking Him to allow it to motivate you to saying YES to partner with Him in going after the UPGRADE with boldness and courage.
Blessings,
Jane Evans