There is an impassable river before you. You wouldn’t even think of fording it, especially not when it is at flood stage and certainly not with thousands of others, except that God has said you must.

If you ever get across, you will face hostile nations with fortified cities and large armies. By comparison, you have only a small, inexperienced army. But God has told you to attack those armies, capture those cities, and inherit the land.

We can understand that with such a daunting challenge before him Joshua stood in need of this encouragement from the Lord: “Be strong and courageous.”

It is one thing to be ordered to do something. It is quite another to be given the tools to do it. If someone ordered you to hunt a bear and told you just to be strong and courageous about it, knowing full well that you didn’t have the training or the gear to do so, you would not listen.

Is that the sort of thing God was asking of Joshua? After all, God didn’t offer him any clues about how to bring thousands of people across a raging, swelling river. Nor did He provide him with an elaborate military strategy to meet the enemy on the other side.

But as we read further, we discover that Joshua’s readiness for a successful mission didn’t rest on strategy and skill. Everything depended instead upon the total reliability of God’s Word.

The Lord didn’t merely tell Joshua to be strong and courageous. He also told him wherein his strength and courage lay.

He said: Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.Joshua 1:7, 8.

With God’s sure and unshakable Word in his mouth and in his mind, Joshua would be successful! God’s call for us to fight the good fight of faith is at the same time a call to an unwavering adherence to his Word. It’s a call to have his Word in our mouth and in our mind, so that we are able to do his will. God has continually called his servants to courage in the face of obstacles and opposition in this way.

In 2 Timothy 3, for example, Paul prepares Timothy to face the spiritual battle, which he himself has been busy fighting, by urging him: “Continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.” He appeals to him to hold on to the Scriptures in which he was taught since he was a little child (2 Timothy  3:14, 15). He will be thoroughly equipped and well-trained, a strong and courageous man of God, if he remains unwavering in his obedience to God’s Word!

What is true for those who lead God’s people, like Joshua and Timothy, is true for the rest of God’s people too. The promise for those whose mouths and hearts overflow with God’s Word is that they will be saved.

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.Romans 10:10

The Lord Jesus Himself is the Word of God incarnate. He is the Word that needs to be near you, “in your mouth and in your heart” (Romans 10:8). Where He is present, there is true valour.

He is the greater Joshua who also faced a humanly impassable obstacle, the one between man and God. By his death and resurrection, however, He crossed over the torrent of sin and death, taking all his redeemed along, leading us in victory into the inheritance of his kingdom.

Be strong and courageous, then, by keeping your mouth and heart full of his Word!