"Don't Be Discouraged"

Joshua 8-9:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Joshua%208-9&version=NIV

            “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”  Again.  Was Joshua just some sort of coward?  Why the constant encouragement?  I don’t think that Joshua was a coward at all; I don’t think he was afraid of warfare.  Bear in mind the context.  The thing that was getting Joshua down was Israel’s obstinacy; the defeat at Ai was the result of Achan’s refusal to obey and his desire to feather his own nest.  Consider that it was just a few weeks (apparently) since they had circumcised themselves and celebrated the Passover.  So soon after recommitting themselves to the Lord, and look how they had stumbled!

            If we were honest with ourselves, we’d probably have to admit that the thing that gets us down is our own interior weakness, too.  We make a stink about ‘the world’ and its opposition, but it’s much more discouraging to think how often we ourselves don’t live up to our high calling.  I’m writing this while I’m at a pastors’ conference.  We had our opening devotion at 8:45, and we prayed that ‘all our doings and life might please’ the Lord.  Having been awake since 6:30 this morning, I couldn’t help but think that it was too late for me to pray that my doings and life might please the Lord; two hours into my day it would have been more appropriate to pray for forgiveness for those places that my doings had not pleased the Lord.

            So, the Lord’s constant encouragement to Joshua can be a strong encouragement to us, too.  We can hear in it a word of forgiveness, that our failures are in the past and that the Lord remembers them no more.  We can hear in it and encouragement to pray every moment of our day that our doings and life would please the Lord.  It won’t do any good to get stuck on who we were and we have done; it will be much more productive to take courage and to say, “Today is a new day; this is a new hour.”