Deuteronomy 31:7-13: a reflection

7Moses called to Joshua, and said to him in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them; and you shall cause them to inherit it. 8The LORD himself is who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be discouraged.” 9Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the LORD’s covenant, and to all the elders of Israel. 10Moses commanded them, saying, “At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of booths, 11when all Israel has come to appear before the LORD your God in the place which he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and the foreigners who are within your gates, that they may hear, learn, fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law, 13and that their children, who have not known, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land where you go over the Jordan to possess it.”

Moses is handing leadership to Joshua, who is about to lead a nation into a land of daunting challenges, and Moses gives him a charge: be strong and courageous. But notice where the courage is grounded. Not in Joshua's ability, his experience, or his confidence, but in a promise about God: the LORD himself goes before you; he will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.

Linger on that: the LORD himself goes before you. Joshua is not being sent ahead alone to face what comes and hope God shows up. God goes first, ahead of him, into the very things Joshua fears, and will be there with him, and will not fail or abandon him. The courage Moses commands is not a matter of Joshua working up bravery from within; it is the reasonable response to the fact that God has already gone ahead and will not leave.

That is the shape of courage for God's people still. When you face something daunting, the call to be strong and courageous is not a demand to manufacture fearlessness on your own. It rests on a promise: the Lord goes before you into it, and he will not fail you or forsake you. He is already ahead of you in the thing you dread, and he will not abandon you in it. Do not be afraid, not because the task is small, but because he has gone before and stays with you. Take courage from his presence, and go.

Lord, when I face something daunting, remind me that you yourself go before me into it, and you will not fail me or forsake me. Let my courage rest not on my own ability but on your presence going ahead and staying with me. Do not let me be afraid; help me go, because you have gone first.