Be bold! Be strong!

For the Lord your God is with you!

I love the intros to each book in The Message. This spoke to me in particular:
"God's great love and purposes for us are worked out in the messes, storms and sins, blue skies, daily work, and dreams of our common lives, working with us as we are and not as we should be."

Moses was human and sinned against God by not trusting him to bring water out of a rock with a word, so he slammed his staff down on it twice and it gushed. God's people would no longer thirst, but Moses and Aaron would also not enter the Promised Land either. Joshua and Caleb would, along with those 60 and under (they were children and teens when they started wandering in the wilderness). The rest had to die off before the land would be given to the next generation, due to their constant complaining. They would rather be slaves and have the food they were used to in Egypt than go on an adventure with God, sustained by daily bread (manna).

Joshua and Caleb were the only ones among the dozen spies sent out to explore the land who thought they could take the giants who lived there. That's because they saw the fruit and knew that God was fighting for them. It gave them courage.

Moses, their great leader, is gone. The new guy, Joshua, tells the tribes who will be settling on this side of the Jordan that they need to fight alongside their brothers until everyone gets the land God has promised them. They have been slaves or wanderers for nearly 500 years. Here is their response: "Everything you commanded us, we'll do. Wherever you send us, we'll go. We obeyed Moses to the letter; we'll also obey you—we just pray that God, your God, will be with you as he was with Moses. Strength! Courage!"

God is with us. We can be strong and courageous as we go into the future God has for us.