The Christians Hour

Host: You're listening to The Christians Hour. Thank you for joining us today; we're so glad you've chosen to spend time with us. The Christians Hour is a ministry of Gospel Broadcasting Mission, where we proclaim the hope and love of Jesus Christ around the world through radio and media until all have heard.

When was the last time you felt like you were full of courage? A time in your life when you felt like you had what you needed to step forward into something that required real boldness? Was it recently? Was it quite some time ago? Or have you ever felt like you were full of courage? I think more often than not, we tend to find those moments few and far between. And yet times of fear and anxiety seem to come frequently and often.

Why is that? Do we miss out on things because of our feelings and our fear? The anticipation of what could go wrong might go wrong, or that the circumstances of unforeseen events or unexpected outcomes will negatively impact our lives? Somehow we can get hung up on the negative. I know for me, I recently returned from a trip to Asia, and in preparation for it, I have to admit, I was really fearful. Walking into a different culture, dealing with different languages, meeting new people, and stepping into situations that were unfamiliar. And yet, those were some of the most beautiful and special moments and experiences of the entire trip.

How do we learn to step into courage with faith and boldness as we are commanded to do in Scripture? Today, we kick off a new series as we explore what a life filled with courage and boldness looks like when we face our fears, either big or small. We're going to unpack this through the book of Joshua. Israel had stood on the edge of the Promised Land before, but they lacked the courage to trust God and move forward. Now, as Joshua leads them, we see God calling his people to courage, not because there would be no obstacles or reasons to be afraid, but because they could trust that the God who had promised them to go would be with them.

Pastor Rick Atchley of the Hills Church in Fort Worth, Texas, shares how we must get past these excuses and embrace the truth of God's word. To live a life of faithfulness and boldness in light of the promises God has given us, while also recognizing the consequences when we choose fear over faith. Here's Rick to share more.

Rick Atchley: Have you ever let fear keep you from going somewhere you really wanted to go? America's greatest jazz trumpeter was Louis Armstrong. He grew up in the swamps of Louisiana in a shack with his Aunt Hattie Mae. His job every morning and evening was to go down to the swamp with his wooden bucket and bring back water. He went down one morning and as he put the bucket in the water, the head of a big alligator surfaced and scared him to death. He dropped the bucket and ran back to the shack.

His aunt reprimanded him and said, "Where's my water, boy?" He explained and she said, "You go back and get me some water. That gator is as scared of you as you are of him." He replied, "Aunt Hattie Mae, if that gator is as scared of me as I am of him, that water ain't fit to drink." I ask you again, have you ever let fear keep you from going some place you really wanted to go? Maybe you really did want that job, but you never got up the courage to go to the interview.

You really did want to apply to go to that school, but you were afraid you'd be rejected. You really did want to ask her out, but you never got up the courage to pick up the phone. You really did want to go on that mission trip. You really did want to go to that women's conference, but you were too timid to act on what you wanted. I just got back from Africa. I confess to you that just before we left, I started to get afraid because I knew it would be hard. I knew it would be exhausting, and it was. But it was also so wonderful, and I look back and I'm so glad I didn't let fear keep me from where I wanted to go.

There are a couple of social psychologists named Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec. They study the psychology of regret, and they have discovered in their research that if you ask people right at the moment what they regret, something they did or something they didn't do, by a very small margin, 53 to 47 percent, people say, "I regret what I just did." But if you ask them to look back over their life and over the long haul, by an 84 to 16 percent margin, more than four to one, what people regret most as they look back on their life are not the mistakes they made.

People regret the things they wanted to do but they never got around to doing because they didn't have the time or, maybe more honestly, they didn't have the courage. Many churches are the same way. They allow fear to keep them where they are instead of where they ought to be. It will always be safer to be cautious than to be courageous. We see similarity in where the children of Israel were in the book of Joshua. They were on the banks of a river with a promise of a great future ahead of them, but it was going to require courage to claim it.

The book starts with these words in chapter one: "After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide: 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 them—to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses." Actually, the promise even goes further back to Abraham, 400 years earlier.

God had promised this land to the descendants of Abraham. Out of all the land in the earth, God had sovereignly chosen this land to be the place where the grand drama of redemption was going to be played out, where eventually the next Joshua, Jesus of Nazareth, would come and work His mission. God considers this as a done deal. "I am giving, I will give." In the Hebrew, it's a perfect tense verb. All that means is it's a verb where you see something in the future that is so sure, you talk about it like it's already happened.

Ownership by promise must be turned into ownership by possession. It's like when you go and you close on a house, and you now own the house. You just haven't moved into it yet. God says that's how it is with you. Joshua had been waiting 40 years for this command because 40 years earlier, when the children of Israel were rescued by God out of Egypt, they crossed the Red Sea. They went straight to the same spot and stood in front of the same river.

They sent 12 spies into that land, including Joshua and Caleb. The report of 10 of the spies came back: "It's going to be hard, and we're afraid." God said, "Okay, then just stay where you are." Joshua spent the next 40 years of his life doing two things: walking in circles and going to funerals. "See that rock before? Time for a funeral. Walked by that bush before? Time for a funeral." Now God has brought the children back to the same spot with the same decision.

Do you want what I am willing to give? Are you going to be cautious or are you going to be courageous? The situation wasn't any less frightening; maybe it was even more scary because Moses was dead now. This new generation that grew up, they weren't experienced in battle and warfare. Those giants in the land had not gotten any smaller, and they weren't planning to move. They didn't send Israel a telegram saying, "Hey, give us a month to pack and we'll move out and you can just march right in."

Possessing their inheritance required dispossessing the people that lived in their land. They were going to have to conquer the Canaanites, but that meant they were going to have to conquer their fear. Three times in the very first chapter of Joshua, God says the same thing: "Be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid like you were last time." We must possess courage to possess all God wants us to have. God said, "I will give you everywhere you put your foot. You can have as much as you want, but you've got to have the courage to go get it."

I'll give it, but you've got to go take it. I believe God is still saying the same thing to his people: that he is willing to give us so much more of an inheritance that was purchased for us by the death and resurrection of Jesus than we actually claim because it is possible to possess something and not really possess it. A lot of you have books on your shelves at home you've never read. You have gift cards you've never redeemed. You have memberships you pay for every month to gyms you never go to. You can own something and not really own it.

Canaan, despite what some of our popular songs say, is not a figure for heaven. Canaan is a figure for the life that God wants his people to have after they get saved. You were saved at Egypt when he called you out across that sea; that's the symbol of your redemption. But God didn't call you out of Egypt so you could spend the rest of your life walking in circles in a desert. He called you out of Egypt so he could take you to Canaan so he could give you a life of promise and abundance and fruitfulness, the life he wants you to have.

Many of us, even though we're saved, spend our lives on the wrong side of the river, playing it safe, being cautious, and stuck. But we've got to have courage. How do you fill your courage tank? Let's let God tell us in chapter one, verse six. He says to Joshua, "Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them." The first thing we learn is that courage is formed by vision and by faith. People of courage don't just see what is; they see what could be.

They don't just settle for what they have because they see the potential for so much more. Joshua walked in that wilderness for 40 years, but he never lost the vision of what could be. He never forgot of the kind of life Israel could have instead of the life they were currently experiencing. Perspectives varied after they went across that river and he saw that land with ten other people who saw everything he saw but came back with a different view.

They came back and said to Israel, "The people there are really, really big, and the walls of the cities are really, really high. This is going to be really, really hard." Everybody got scared. But Joshua and Caleb saw that same land through the eyes of faith and vision because it wasn't just what they saw that inspired them; it is what they heard. God had said, "I swore that I would give this land to your ancestors." They saw what they saw because of the promise that they heard.

Unbelieving reports were brought back by the other spies, who left that promise out of the picture. God said they brought back an evil report. Nothing in their report was untrue. The people were big and the walls were tall and it was going to be hard. But it was evil, not because it was untrue, but because it was unbelieving. They left God's promises out of the equation. This is for us as a church, but this is just for you as a disciple. You will always be able to find good reasons to stay right where you are if you want to live a scared life.

Excuses do not sustain people of courage; they live by promises. You will always be able to put together a fact sheet of why you should attempt nothing, try nothing, risk nothing, sacrifice nothing. People of courage don't live by excuses; they live by promises. Faithfulness is not holding down the fort; faithfulness is pushing back the gates of hell. In order to step into the promises of God, you have to store up the promises of God. Obedience to the law was God's next command to Joshua, which was so unexpected.

"Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 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."

Military advice was not given to Joshua, despite launching a major campaign. God's word to Joshua was to get into God's word because courage is fueled by the word of God. The last time they went into that land, they heard different voices. They heard voices that were full of fear and dread and despair. God says, "Joshua, you meditate on my word day and night." If you are going to upgrade your courage, you need to download my word so that you're always hearing a better and braver voice. You can own a Bible and not possess the word of God.

Boldness comes when we put the word in our hearts, but we get really bold when the word goes from our hearts to our mouths. If we're going to be people full of courage, we've got to be full of truth. It's interesting to me that God didn't just say "meditate" on the word; he said "keep it always on your lips." As they approach the river, these two and a half tribes—the Rubenites, the Gadites, the half-tribe of Manasseh—they come to Moses and say, "This is really good pastureland, and God said we could have this too. So can we just have this land?"

Moses said, "You can, but you've got to go help your brothers." They're getting to this critical moment and Joshua reminds them. Look at what he says: "All your fighting men, ready for battle, must cross over ahead of your fellow Israelites. You're to help them until the Lord gives them rest, as he has done for you, and until they too have taken possession of the land the Lord your God is giving them." Unity demonstrated by the tribes was fanned by courage. This is so important.

The one thing that could derail Israelite victory would be Israelite disunity. Joshua goes to these two and a half tribes and says, "You got yours, but you've got brothers who don't have theirs yet. You cannot rest until the rest get their rest." I saw an example of this spirit in Panama City, Florida. These two boys got out into the water and they got caught up in a rip tide. Their daddy went out to try to rescue them and he got caught up too.

Simmons realized he wasn't strong enough to fight the current. A man named Derek Simmons tried to go out to help, but he realized he wasn't strong enough. His wife, Jessica, began screaming to people all up and down the beach. Over 80 people got out into the water and they formed a human chain. People locked arms, people that didn't know each other, people that had never met each other to save people they didn't know. It reminds me of what those two and a half tribes said to Joshua.

"Just as we fully obeyed Moses, so we will obey you. Only be strong and courageous." The tribes said to Joshua, "We want a courageous leader. We want you to be the man God is calling you to be. We want you to call us out to boldness and the big dreams and big ideas." Hearts for God inevitably grow the house of God. You grow hearts for God by giving people the opportunity to choose between being cautious or being courageous. Caution says "God might," but courage says "God is mighty."

Our God is greater than funerals, even Moses' funeral. Our God is mightier than rivers, even flooded rivers like the Jordan. Our God is stronger than walls, even walls as big as the ones around Jericho. Our God is greater than the greatest of giants. Australia's coat of arms might be a good choice for a coat of arms. Have you ever seen their coat of arms? It has these two animals on it native to that land: the kangaroo and the emu.

Neither one of these animals can go backward. The emu has this three-toed foot that won't allow it to go backwards. If it tries, it falls down. The kangaroo's got this big long tail that won't let it go backwards; it stumbles. They picked these two animals because neither one can go backward. They can only go forward. That's the kind of life I want to live for Jesus. I don't want to stand before my God and have him ask me why I settled for so much less than I could have had. I want us to have everything God is willing to give us.

Host: I will follow, follow, I will follow... I will follow, follow, I will follow... I will follow, follow, I will follow... I'll go with Him... I'll go with Him... I'll go with Him... all the way... I will go, go with Him... I'll go with Him... I'll go with Him... all the way... where He leads me I will follow... where He leads me I will follow... where He leads me I will follow... I will follow... I'll go with Him...

How about you? Have you taken the time to embrace the promises of God? To live out a life that reflects a child of the one true King walking in confidence and courage into whatever life may bring? A life lived like that is one without regret, one filled with expectation and trust that God is going to move in ways that are beyond our abilities or our circumstances. If you haven't, let me encourage you today. Don't miss out. Don't believe the lies. Don't let fear creep in.

And when it does, stand on the one who gave his life for you. Stand on the truth of his word, knowing that his word will never fail and that he is faithful to keep his promises. Our thanks to Rick Atchley for that powerful teaching today. And our thanks as well to Acappella Ministries for their music of worship. If you'd like to hear this message again or listen to previous programs, visit us at our website, thechristianshour.org. There you'll find all of our programs from this year, or you can find us wherever you listen to podcasts.

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