Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.
- Joshua 1:6

The Lord had a specific purpose for Joshua: lead the people into the promised land. Hundreds of years earlier God had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit this territory. Famine and enslavement kept them away. After their exodus out of Egypt, they still failed to enter into the land that had been promised them; fear, doubt, and disobedience kept them away. But Joshua would lead them into the land.

Joshua knew with blinding clarity what it was that the Lord wanted him to do as a leader. The clarity of the Lord’s purpose for him could serve him as a source of strength and courage in the trying and difficult days ahead.

But few of us know the Lord’s purposes for us with the same blinding clarity that Joshua had. We tell ourselves that faltering and wavering finds justification in our lack of clarity. But in Joshua’s example we find this logic overturned.

He knew what God wanted him to do, but still he felt weak and afraid. In fact, his clarity about the Lord’s purposes for him left him feeling overmatched. Don’t believe for an instant that clarity of purpose makes everything easy. Even when we know exactly what the Lord wants us to do, doing it can be quite a challenge. We have to trust God that he will make it possible for us to do what he purposes us to do.

You and I may never receive a “go do this” calling as specific as Joshua’s. That’s okay. We each have small things every day that we know with perfect clarity that the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to love him and our neighbors and our enemies. His purposes for us include his desire to show us his love and affection; and for us to serve as a conduit for his love and justice to reach the world.

Can we trust the Lord to make it possible to fulfill his purposes for us? Out of this trust comes both strength and courage.

Where in your life are you exercising your trust muscles to believe that the Lord will make it possible to fulfill his purposes for you? How does your trust in the Lord manifest itself as both strength and courage?