Courage's Compounding Impact

“Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.  This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success." ‭‭Joshua‬ ‭1: 7-8 ‭NKJV‬‬

A Quaker adage as rendered in the New Yorker by Rachel Aviv dictates, "Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee."

The same spirit pervades Joshua 1:7. We are prone, I suspect, to think courage is other people's resource. Courage is for those whose lives are threatened. Courage is summoned for one grand burst of obedience which is talked about for ages thereafter. Here, though, the result of courage is less glare than guidance.

Joshua knows of the flashier kind of physical courage. He was, after all, Moses' representative on the field of battle while that leader still lived. Yet God tells him here that one of the results of courage, one of the results of not fearing, is the ability to observe what obedience requires in life's everyday details. As a buzz of anxiety is subdued by faith, we are apparently able to hear more subtleties, to understand what God's righteousness calls us to in any given situation and to follow hard after it. Before we can do, after all, we have to observe to do. Before we can observe, we have to, by faith, tell fear to pipe down.

The accumulating impact of this mental and emotional discipline, possible by grace and faith, is also telling. God does not call Joshua, or us, merely to a life of the mind. Obeying Him here not only allows us to determine what's right and do it, but to actually experience some external results. As He accounts for, our way will be prosperous. We will experience something even we can recognize as good success, all because we put fear in perspective, begin to discern what faith-filled obedience looks like in offices, and homes, and classrooms, and follow through.

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