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SCRIPTURE: JOSHUA 1:1-6       

     Welcome back to our look at the Serenity Prayer and how it can be a tool for God to use to help us walk in Biblical truths as we allow the Holy Spirit to continue to transform our lives. If you’ve missed the first two weeks, I’m Wade Jones, pastor at Priest Lake Christian Fellowship and long-time friend to the Hilpert family and New Joy Fellowship.

            So far, we have talked about what it means to ask God for gifts, and what it looks like to receive and practice the gift of serenity. This week, we are going to look at the gift of courage. When we ask for courage, what does that look like, and what effect will it have on our lives when we receive and practice that gift?

            I know when I think about Biblical courage, the first passage that comes to mind is Joshua 1. So, in this passage, Moses has died, and God speaks directly to Joshua, his successor. Three times in this chapter, God tells Joshua to “Be strong and courageous.” What is God asking Joshua to do? And more importantly, what is God doing around Joshua when He gives Joshua this command? Let’s read the first six verses of this passage together:

1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. 5 No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.” (Joshua 1:1-6)

            I want to make an important point here. It may seem small, but sometimes small points can make an incredibly large difference, especially over time. We often talk about Joshua leading the Israelites into Canaan to take the land, and the way we do that implies that Joshua and his army are the primary actors. But look carefully at the language of Scripture in this passage:

Verse 2 – The land I (YHWH) am about to give the Israelites
Verse 3 – I (YHWH) will give you every place you set your foot
Verse 5 – No one will be able to stand against you, because I (YHWH) will be with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Right here at the beginning, God is emphasizing how fully this will be His action, His power, His conquering. In verse 6, He talks about Israel inheriting the land. How do you get the property of an inheritance? Someone else owns it, and they give it to you on their death. And God also says in verse 6 that He is fulfilling the oath He made to their ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says similar things later in the chapter, but hopefully this is enough to make the point. The major actor in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites was God.

And if we move ahead in the story, we will see that pattern continue. How does Israel get across the Jordan River? God piles up the water on either side and they march through on dry land. How does Israel conquer Jericho? They march around it in obedience and God brings the walls down. He is the one making all this happen. Well, if God is the one making all this happen, why does Israel, and Joshua in particular as their leader, need to be strong and courageous?

            Remember, Israel has been here before. Forty years before. They stood in basically the same spot, with Moses at their head, and when they were on the brink of coming into the land, how did they respond? (Well, most of them anyway.) They were afraid. They heard the report and got preoccupied with the power of the enemies they were facing instead of focusing on the power of the God they were following. (This is all in Numbers 13 and 14 if you want to read the whole story.) And Joshua had been there for that. He pleads with Israel to go into the land in language that is similar to the language God uses with him in Joshua 1. “The Lord will bring us into the land…The Lord is with us.” Forty years ago, Joshua knew that God was the primary one at work in God’s own plans to bring Israel into Canaan, but Israel couldn’t see it. And as we all know, that led to forty years of wandering in the desert, and along the way Moses lost patience as well, so when they finally come back to this point, he is gone, and Joshua has taken his place. God is telling Joshua to be strong and courageous just as Joshua had told Israel 40 years earlier and based on the same reason: taking the land is God’s job; our job is to be faithful to Him!

            This is one of the primary forms courage takes for God’s people, whether Israel or us: to trust that God will do what He says He will do and act on that basis. Sometimes those actions will be risky. That wall of water in the Jordan River could have collapsed at any moment, drowning the Israelites in the same way that the Egyptians had drowned in the Red Sea. Joshua needed courage to trust God when He said, “Walk on through.” And sometimes those actions will appear foolish. What possible military value does it have to circle the city of Jericho for seven days? All that does is make sure the enemy has a good count of your army. We would fire any general who suggested that! Joshua and Israel needed the courage to trust that following God’s directions was the best possible way for them to take the city of Jericho. And we still need the courage to trust that following God’s directions is the path that leads to the best possible future for us.

            It’s my opinion that the order of requests in the Serenity Prayer matters. One part of serenity is the ability to accept that life is as it is – to accept life on life’s terms. You see, courage is not glibly or blindly denying that there are difficulties ahead. God does not call us to live in denial, but in trust. And when we have seen the world as it is, some of it will be pretty scary. Courage does not mean closing our eyes to the dangers around us. It means trusting that our Father is a good Father and moving ahead with what He has told us to do no matter what it looks like. We are not called to change the circumstances of the world. We are called to change our responses to the circumstances of the world. And to do that, we need courage. The trust to obey the word of the Lord even if it doesn’t make sense.

            “If I tell the truth about that business deal, I will probably lose that customer, and my boss has already told me that if I don’t make my quota this week, I’m going to get laid off. We’re already late on a couple of payments, and I don’t know what we’ll do if I lose my job.”

            “That woman is spreading all kinds of rumors about me in the neighborhood. I saw her talking across the fence to Jane just last night. But I know a thing or two about her that will put her in her place, and frankly, I could use the peace and quiet. She’s going to cause me all kinds of trouble if I don’t make sure everyone knows what kind of scoundrel she really is.”

            “My close friend is slowly drifting away from God. He hasn’t been to church in weeks, and he’s making jokes at the restaurant about how little time he spends reading his Bible or praying anymore. I’d like to say something to him, but he’s got a pretty mean temper. I’m afraid if I confront him, we’ll get into an argument, and I don’t want to risk losing that friendship.”

            I don’t mean to paint any of these scenarios as ones that are simple to navigate. If you are in one of them, please talk to Tom and Kari to get good, Christ-centered counsel about what some good next steps would be. But I can tell you for myself, that when I am in situations like these, I have a pretty strong response of fear to the idea of losing income, or reputation, or friendships. And if I do not pay attention to that, it is really easy for me to slip into making a decision based on that fear, instead of a decision based on trust that God is my Father, and He is on my side. Can God provide for my family if I lose my job? He can – but it may be embarrassing when He uses others to help me. Can God guard my reputation if someone is gossiping about me, or do I need to gossip back to protect myself? He can – but sometimes it takes Him a lot longer than I’d like, and it’s pretty uncomfortable in the meanwhile. Can God comfort me through the loss of a friendship when I have spoken the truth in love, and it hasn’t been well-received? He can – but that doesn’t take away the pain.

            This is one of the connections between courage and serenity. I must have the courage to act in line with what God has commanded, and the serenity to accept the reality that the results may not be what I want. And both of those require me to trust Him in ways that may end up being pretty painful.

            Here’s another connection: when I recognize that there is something in the way of my serenity, of my peace, that can make me aware of something that needs to change – and usually, at least part of the change will be something that needs to change in me. When life doesn’t go the way I want it to, when things go south, one of my default reactions can be to look for someone else to blame. That goes back all the way to the beginning, doesn’t it? “It was this woman You gave me – she just handed me a fruit and I ate it!” I have always wondered what would have happened next if Adam had the courage to own his responsibility as Eve’s husband and the leader of his garden home. How would the Father have responded if Adam had gone to Him (instead of trying to hide), and said, “God, I blew it. I made a mistake, and I take full responsibility for it. What do You want me to do now?” God probably still would have addressed not only Adam’s sin, but also Eve’s, and I’m sure the serpent as well. But when we resort to blaming someone else, even if they share responsibility, we are missing the opportunity to make courageous changes in ourselves, or even better, to ask God to do that.

            Not everything painful in my life is my fault (Tom has a great podcast about suffering that addresses a lot of that). But most of the things in my life are things where I play at least some part, and where there is at least something I can change. All of us have some defects in our character (shortcomings, sins, strongholds) that God wants to address, and those changes will take courage. Maybe I need to be more up-front with my customer to begin with. Maybe my irritation at that neighbor means I haven’t been praying for her, or maybe my tendency to be judgmental is causing me to see her wrongly. Maybe some of my concern for my friend is based on the realization that my own time in the Word has been slipping of late. When I ask God for the courage to change, the first place I ought to look for change is within me. For one thing, that may be the only thing I actually can change. I can’t change my boss or my customer; I can’t change my neighbor; I can’t change my friend. But by God’s grace, I can change. And I will, if I ask Him for the courage to do so.

            One of the rooms I go to for recovery meetings has a poster on the wall that refocuses the first part of the Serenity Prayer. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the person I cannot change, the courage to change the person I can, and the wisdom to know that person is me.” If I’m trying to find the courage just to make someone else behave the way I want, I may not have much peace at the end of the day. But if I find the courage to ask God to change the places in me where I’m not walking in trust, where I’m not walking in obedience, where I’m not following Him – those changes are much more likely to occur, and there’s not much anyone else can do to stop them.

            I want to wrap up this week by saying again that this is not about trying harder. We are not trying to make ourselves more courageous, or to act more courageously. We are asking God to give us courage to do what He asks us to do. And part of asking that is putting ourselves in a place to receive it from Him. As I said about serenity last week, God usually works in my life through a process of gradual change, not an instantaneous transformation. We are not likely to move from being dominated by fear today to being completely free of it tomorrow. But what we can do is ask for it and cooperate with God as He does it.

            Trevor Hudson has written a short book on the Serenity Prayer – that’s what it’s called, The Serenity Prayer, and I recommend it; it’s a good read. At the end of his chapter on this section, he gives the following illustration: “Imagine an escalator going up to God. Whenever we find ourselves struggling with a particular character defect – for instance, always wanting to be in the right – we imagine ourselves picking it up as if it were a poisonous snake, placing it into a sack, and putting it on the escalator. When the sack comes back again, as it surely will, we have a quick look inside, see what it is, and immediately place it back on the escalator. We continue doing whatever we need to, but we don’t try to beat the character defect in our own strength. If we do, it will win every time. Every time the sack returns, we simply put it back on the escalator. After days, weeks, months, or even years, we notice one day that the sack doesn’t come back. We realize that God is in the process of changing us.

            Change is often painful. Change generally requires courage. God can, and will change us – He will lead us into the Promised Land that He is giving us – if we will continue to ask Him.

I’ll close again this week by praying the Serenity Prayer, and if God leads you, please feel free to join me in learning and praying this prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardships as a pathway to peace.

Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it to be.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will – that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever.

Thank you for letting me be with you a couple weeks ago at New Joy, and for listening today. May God bless you and keep you as you go through this week. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.