Joshua 1:7
"Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go."
—
God said this to Joshua three times in the first nine verses of the book.
Verse 6: "Be strong and courageous."
Verse 7: "Be strong and very courageous."
Verse 9: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."
Three times in nine verses. The repetition is not accidental. The Bible is sparse with words. When it says something three times in a short span, it is telling us something about the man who needed to hear it.
Joshua was afraid.
We do not read that explicitly, but we can deduce it from how often God had to say it. You do not tell a confident man to be courageous three times. You tell a man who is trembling.
And Joshua had every reason to tremble.
Moses had just died. Moses, who had led the people for forty years. Moses, who had spoken with God face to face. Moses, who had parted the Red Sea and brought water from rock and held up his hands while the Israelites won battles below. That Moses was gone. And now Joshua, who had been the assistant, the second, the man behind the leader, was being told to take the people across the Jordan and into a land full of fortified cities and giants.
He must have felt the weight in his chest. The size of the shoes he was being asked to fill. The thousand ways he could fail. The people watching, comparing, remembering Moses.
So God said it three times.
—
I want to draw your attention to verse 7, the middle one, because it is the strangest of the three.
"Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you."
Notice what follows the command to be courageous.
Not: be courageous, because I am with you. (That is verse 9.)
Not: be courageous, because the land is yours. (That is the surrounding context.)
But: be courageous, because you must obey carefully.
This is unexpected.
We tend to think courage is what we need for the dramatic moments. The battles. The decisions. The Jordan crossings. We do not usually think of courage as what we need for daily, careful obedience to what God has already said.
But God speaks to Joshua differently.
Courage, He says, is not mainly for the dramatic moment. Courage is for the slow, daily, careful keeping of the law I gave Moses. Courage is for not turning to the right or to the left. Courage is for the long obedience.
This is harder than it sounds.
The dramatic moment passes. You either rise to it or you do not, and then it is over. But the long, careful, daily obedience — turning neither right nor left from what God has said, decade after decade — this is where most of us actually lose our courage. We turn. A little to the right here, a little to the left there. The compromises seem small. The decades go by. By the end, we have wandered far from the path, not by a single dramatic departure but by ten thousand small ones.
God knew Joshua would face battles. But He also knew Joshua would face forty more years of leading a stubborn people through ordinary days, and that the harder courage would be needed for the ordinary days.
So He said it three times. And He said it in the middle of a command about careful obedience.
—
If you are reading this, you are probably not at a Jordan crossing today. You are probably in an ordinary week, with ordinary work, with ordinary temptations to turn a little to the right or a little to the left.
God's word to you is the same as it was to Joshua.
Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey what He has already said. Do not turn from it.
The courage you need today is not for some imagined future battle. It is for the small, careful, daily faithfulness that the years will compound into either a faithful life or a wandered one.
He has said it three times. He is saying it again. Be strong. Be courageous. Be careful.
He is with you wherever you go.
—
Prayer
Lord, I have been waiting for the dramatic moment to be courageous. The Jordan crossing. The big decision. The one act of faith that would prove I was Yours.
You are telling me that the courage I actually need is for today. For the careful keeping of what You have already said. For not turning to the right or to the left in the small things, where I have been turning for years.
Be with me, as You were with Joshua. Three times if I need to hear it three times. Help me obey carefully today, and the next day, and the next, until the years compound into a life that did not wander.
I am not at a Jordan. I am at a Monday morning. Make me strong and courageous here. Amen.
—
Written by Dr. Jang in Jeju, Korea. Adapted into English by his son