How to Be Brave No Matter What I'm Facing (Joshua 1:9)
This is In the Word, On the Go, the podcast where we look at one verse from God's word for 10 minutes of your day. Welcome to In the Word, On the Go, I’m Champ Thornton, your host. Whether you're listening by yourself or with your family, this podcast is here for you to spend ten more minutes in God’s Word while you go about your day.
In each episode, I get to interview one person about a favorite verse from the Bible, and today I welcome back Jared Kennedy. Jared is author of The Beginner's Gospel Story Bible.
Jared Kennedy (1:16):
It's good to be here.
Champ Thornton (1:17):
All right, Jared, what verse do you have for us today?
Jared Kennedy (01:19):
Well, I have Joshua 1:9 and it says this. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Champ Thornton (01:32):
All right. So if you put that in your own words, that'd be the JKV, not the KJV. What’s your Jared Kennedy version?
Jared Kennedy (01:40):
Well, my Jared Kennedy version is, we can be brave—and God commands us to be brave—because he is with us. That is, in the face of any circumstances, we face. So it’s wherever we go. We can be brave because God is with us.
Champ Thornton (01:58):
Okay. So Jared you could have picked any verse in the Bible, but you picked this verse. Why that particular verse?
Jared Kennedy (02:04):
Okay. So when I was in third grade, I was in this group at church. It was a children’s group and we did what’s called Bible Drill, which is kind of a silly thing we used to do where we would race each other to look up verses in the Bible the fastest. The great thing about it was we memorized a lot of Scripture, but back then we memorized it in the King James Version. The end of this verse was super difficult for me in third grade. So I would practice it over and over again with my parents. So the last phrase was, “For the Lord thy God is with thee, whithersoever thou goest.” That whithersoever was so, so difficult,
Champ Thornton (2:50):
That’s hard to say.
Jared Kennedy (2:51):
It was really hard to say. And so it’s stuck with me and just kind of, as a result, this verse has come back. I laugh every time I read it and feel like we should be saying it in the King James. And it’s just kind of stuck with me for years as a result of that.
Champ Thornton (03:08):
Yeah, that’s great. I was raised memorizing out of the King James as well, and those phrases just come to mind and off the tongue so easily. So I’m going to read it again. I’m going to read out of the Christian Standard Bible. Before I do that, why don't you tell us, what do we need to know? Any kind of background that’d be helpful before we read it.
Jared Kennedy (03:24):
Yeah, Joshua was a protégé of Moses. He studied under Moses and he saw times when the children of Israel were afraid and discouraged, and they’d shrink back from what God had commanded them to do. But over and over again God commands his people to trust him and be brave, and to step out in faith and he says, “You can have faith in spite of your circumstances.”
And so, you know, that story at the end of the book of Numbers, where they come to the edge of the promised land and the spies go in and they see the giants in the land, and they see the big city walls. Ten of the spies look at those circumstances and say, “There’s no way we can take this land, right?” But it’s not our circumstances that show us how we can move forward in faith. It's not the size of the land we’re entering into. It's the size of our God. And Joshua and Caleb were the spies who had courage. They were brave. Not because they were strong themselves, but because they knew they had a big God who was going with them wherever they went.
Champ Thornton (04:34):
So that same God is talking to Joshua here. And I’m reading Joshua chapter one, verse nine. And here’s what He says. “Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” So if you were going to explain this verse, Jared, to a fifth-grader, what would you say phrase by phrase? How would you unpack this verse?
Jared Kennedy (04:57):
Yeah. So just simply, first of all, that God commands us to be strong and courageous. So this is not a suggestion that we be brave, but one of the things God demands of Christians is real bravery in the face of difficult circumstances. So this is right before Joshua and the people go to battle, right before they go into Jericho. And that strength and that courage that He commands and demands from us doesn’t come from ourselves and the strength we find in ourselves. It doesn’t come from what we see around us and our circumstances. But it comes from God who is with us, and who gives us this promise: “I will go with you wherever you go.”
Champ Thornton (05:42):
Yes, because he was heading into a very unknown situation going into the land. And he didn’t know exactly every place that his foot would fall, but he knew the Lord would be with him.
Jared Kennedy (05:51):
That’s right. And God promised him, and the people, that he would give them every place they set their foot. So there's this amazing promise that I am the God who’s going to conquer, come with me. And I will be with you wherever you go. You can be brave. You can have courage because I am with you.
Champ Thornton (06:11):
Boy, that reminds me of the Great Commission in Matthew 28.
Jared Kennedy (06:14):
Yeah, we get the same promise there, don’t we? As we go into all the world—and you know, it’s not by strength or by armies that God overcomes the world today. It’s through our faith and through the faith of those who believe in Him—we go out and preach the good news of the gospel.
Champ Thornton (6:31):
That's right.
Jared Kennedy (6:32):
Knowing that he’s with us, wherever we go.
Champ Thornton (06:34):
That's great. So, Jared, how do you hope the Lord might use this verse to change our lives today?
Jared Kennedy (06:40):
Yeah, Champ, I don’t know what our listeners are heading into today. I don't know what circumstances face them. There may be a difficult moral choice in front of them. There may be something they need to say to a friend, someone with whom they need to share the gospel today, and it’s scary. Their strength and courage to step up and be obedient to God in those circumstances doesn’t come from those circumstances. It comes from the fact that God has given them his Holy Spirit. He has given his presence to every believer, and he promises that he will go with us wherever we go, or whithersoever we go.
Champ Thornton (07:21):
Haha. Exactly. So would you close our time then? Let's pray for our listeners that God would help us to live this verse out in our lives.
Jared Kennedy (07:30):
Father, we just pray that you would help us be brave, and help us to know that when you call us to obey you don’t leave us alone. You go with us, and you give us strength and courage to be obedient to you in every circumstance. I pray for that strength for each of the listeners today for Christ's sake. Amen.
Champ Thornton (07:50):
Amen. Jared, thanks for being with us again today.
Thanks for listening to In the Word, On the Go. This episode is brought to you by the Christian Standard Bible. For more information about this podcast, or to listen to past episodes, visit wordonthego.net.