His Entrusted Strength

In Joshua 1:5, God says to Joshua, “No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live.  For I will be with you as I was with Moses.  I will not fail you or abandon you.”

“Be strong and courageous" seems to be a pattern recited by God to Joshua a lot.  And Joshua was a warrior.  He was no stranger to battle and conflict.  So there must've been something lacking in his nature that God saw that needed this kind of encouragement.

And courage would especially be needed to carry out this conquest to Canaan.  He was called to be the one who would move the Israelites from their position of lack into the promise of abundance.

Joshua is to encourage himself with the Promise AND the Presence of God.

My commentary says it was like God was saying to Joshua, "I have commanded, called, and commissioned thee to do it, son, and will sure bear thee out of it." 
Ahh, yes… when we are in the way of duty, we have reason to be strong and very bold!

God had been with Moses and so this became the experience for which Joshua could believe Him in His word.  Oh how important it is that we employ our mind to remember the things of God!

Canaan was Joshua's - and it had been promised through Divine grant.  However, God causes Joshua, still, to depend on Himself for the victory that would come.

"Be strong" is a command.
And so strength is a duty.
It is our duty as Christ followers to keep ourselves in continual touch with God.. who is the Fountain of all power. Being strong and courageous might not look the way the world says it should look.  But Christian success in strength and courage is carrying out the conscientious convictions of God's will into practice.

God asks us to go... often times before He tells us where to go.  He asks us to trust and have courage in the midst of what might seem like impossible situations.  But it's important to remember that it is the person who succeeds in obedience and imitation of Jesus that is the true victor.

Just earlier in that same chapter God had promised this to the protege of Moses, ”I will give you every place where you set your foot..." (Joshua 1:3), HOWEVER, only as much as they would tread upon it, occupy it, and possess it.  This was a co-laboring.  He gives us the title-deed to the land... the motive, the power, the strength, and the excitement to enter in and then says, "Enter and possess." 

We, like the Israelites, will own only as much of the promise in our lives as we actually step on it with the sole of our feet!  We, too, have large promises, but they are to be made good by our own exertions.  We must GO in and POSSESS.

My commentary says this, "How little have the greatest saints been able to fill up the grand outline which God sketched out at first when He made man in His own image!  How far short have you all come from God's design for you, and even of your own ideal!  You have contracted the bounds of your being and bounds of your world to the smallest dimensions by your devotion to the petty and passing things of earth."

And so the the question becomes for you and me, “What promise has God made you that He's you to take possession of?’

A new way to see His charge of duty is to see it through the lens of, “He trusts me.”  This assignment has been issued to me because there’s something He sees in me.  There’s something He’s planted within me for success.

And the whole of my life is to live not only fully aware of this provision and trust, but to live in full response to His entrusted strength.

God says, “Here is My entrusted strength, use it well!”