STEPPING INTO OUR FUTURE - PART ONE

Joshua 1:1-9 is an incredibly enriching passage. These verses contain the instructions God gave to Joshua as he assumed the leadership of Israel and together they prepared to possess their future. In these verses we find timeless principles, given to guide Israel and all of us who follow along ‘afar off’ as we step into our future with a confident, expectant spirit.

When Moses died, the man God chose to take his place and lead the Jewish nation into the Promised Land was not a novice. Joshua had been an aide to Moses for at least 40 years and was very likely close to 80 years old when God spoke to him and said:

“Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites” (Joshua 1:2).

It is important that we not skip over these first verses in order to get to the heart of the instructions. The path of confidence starts in these verses! They tell us something extremely important and if we miss it, then the rest of the passage doesn’t take us where we want to go. What do these verses tell us? They tell us that Joshua had an open and personal relationship with God, a relationship that allowed God to speak to him, and allowed Joshua to hear and understand His directions.

Joshua had not simply leaned on Moses all those years of being an aide. Joshua learned from Moses that he, too, could have a relationship with God. Building a relationship is never easy; it takes time, it takes patience; and it takes a determination to see the relationship grow and flourish. For 40 years before Moses assumed the leadership of the Jewish nation he was “away” learning to walk with God, to have a relationship with Him. For the next 40 years Moses led and Joshua learned.

So much victory, so much success in life, in marriage, in business is squandered because people don’t take time to build relationships. Our culture is in such a hurry to succeed that shortcuts are invented. Instead of building relationships, people “hook up” for mutual pleasure and then quickly move on. Carol and I have a good marriage because we have built a good relationship (and because I have humbly learned to do all the vacuuming,,,hold the applause, please).

Joshua had a relationship with God that had been cultivated over the years and now he was faced with what could be considered a major challenge. How would you like to wake up one morning and suddenly have God declare, “Moses is dead and now you are in charge of this unruly bunch…it will be your responsibility to lead them into their future”? Joshua was ready, in large part, because he had a relationship with God and recognized His voice.

Far too many Christians today have such a casual relationship with the Lord that they cannot tell when He is talking; they don’t recognize or understand His voice or His directions. The fruit of a casual, distant relationship is confusion when God begins to speak. It’s confusion because it’s been so long since a real conversation (wholehearted prayer) has taken place that when God begins to speak, we are not sure it’s really Him talking!

In the late 1980’s I was at The 700 Club with an evangelist I was doing work for. While the evangelist was being interviewed on live TV, I waited in the Green Room and talked with the next guest, a Christian psychologist. I had met this doctor years earlier when he was a pastor in the Upper Midwest. We began to talk about current happenings in the church and the impact of several very widely-known moral failures among prominent ministers. (The Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker scandals were in full bloom at that time.)

The pastor/psychologist made the following comment: “Our ministry has been involved in counseling several hundred ministers and missionaries who have gone through moral failures. They come from all walks of life, many different nationalities, and different denominations but they all have one thing in common. At the time of their moral failure, not one of them had a consistent personal relationship with the Lord.” I have never forgotten that statement: “Not one of them had a consistent personal relationship with the Lord at the time of their moral failure.” That’s a sobering and revealing statement.

The road to confidently possessing our future must have as its starting point, as its cornerstone, our personal relationship with God. The seeds of our defeat in possessing our future also lie here, because if the cornerstone is not kept in place then the seeds of failure can sprout and take us in directions we never intended to go. It is my personal belief that our spirit is hungry for a relationship with God and if we do not enter into that relationship, if we do not keep the relationship with Him, and we let it drift and become distant, then that unfulfilled hunger in our human spirit will seek solace in other places.

“Now then, you and all these people get ready to cross…into the land I am about to give…”