Joshua 1:8 “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
We looked at the above quoted passage of scripture in the previous section to show that God encourages us to meditate on His word throughout the day. In this same passage however, God also teaches us to speak His word over our lives, for He says that His word is not to depart from our mouths. And so we see that not only are we to think about God’s word but we are also supposed to confess His word. This is a deliberate action that God counsels us to take. In other words as an act of our will we are to confess God’s word over our lives. So why does God want us to do that? He answers that question for us in this passage, for He told Joshua that if he would be diligent in meditating on and confessing God’s word, that Joshua would have good success. The good success that God was referring to was the success that the Israelites would experience in conquering the nations that were occupying the Promised Land. So why did God link the change in Joshua’s thinking and speech to the success of the Jewish nation? The reason was because as Joshua became fully convinced in his mind as to the reality and truth of God’s word, his faith would be activated thus releasing God’s power, for without the power of God intervening on their behalf the Israelites would never have been able to conquer the powerful nations residing in the Promised Land. And so as the nation’s leader, God needed Joshua to walk as Moses had learnt to walk, i.e. in demonstration of God’s power. Scripture reveals to us that Joshua was diligent in obeying God’s counsel to consistently confess His word, resulting in his faith in God’s power becoming so strong that he is the one person recorded in the bible that God listened to, when Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still for a whole day while the Jews destroyed their enemies in battle (Joshua 10:12-14). This example clearly teaches us that confessing God’s word over our lives is one of the mechanisms that God uses to transform our thinking until we ultimately become fully convinced in our minds as to the reality and truth of His word.
Michael E.B. Maher
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