Working Partners with God

Daily Reading: Joshua 23

Scripture Focus: You shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. (Joshua 23.8)

Devotional Thought: At the end of his life, Joshua took great pains to impress upon the Israelites the importance of clinging to God in the Promised Land. The people of God, he said, were working partners with God:

• God will push them back; you shall possess their land (v. 5). The Israelites never were intended to depend upon their military might and strategy. Instead, they were to follow the lead of God and enter the doors he opened. That does not imply inactivity. After God pushed their enemies back, then they were to do the work of taming and occupying the land.

• God has written it down; you shall live it out (v. 6). Their moral and legal code was not a mystery. It was founded in the Ten Commandments - principles that God had etched in stone with his own finger. They partnered with God in knowing and doing his will in his way. Being hearers of the Word is not enough. We must be doers of the Word.

• God shall fight for you; you shall love your God (vv. 10-11). This aspect of their partnership with God was a reminder that not everything would be easy and automatic. There were barriers to be overcome, battles to be fought. But, they would not be alone. God would be fighting for them. Their part was to always remember that God loved them, and to love him in return.

• God has not failed you; you shall not transgress his law (vv. 15-16). In all things, they had found that God was faithful to them. Now, he was asking that they remain faithful to him. God went first, but they had to be faithful in turn.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for your grace that goes before us. Help us to respond to that preceding grace in faith and in faithfulness. Make us full partners with you for your glory and our good. Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 43.1-5

1 Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me! 2 For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

3 Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! 4 Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.