GetWisdom PaperturnSampler FINAL SinglePages - Flipbook - Page 12
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What did God say to Joshua in Joshua 1:1-9? Why do you think His response to Joshua was
different?
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Though the Israelites believed and supported him, Joshua was still scared and intimidated—
and he stepped into the calling anyway. Unlike Moses, Joshua didn’t come up with a whole bunch
of excuses about why he wasn’t the man for the job. He didn’t try to put his calling onto someone
else.
God doesn’t expect us to run headfirst into monumental roles without a bit of trepidation. He
understands that sometimes we move forward even when we feel weak and inadequate. But as we
see in Joshua 1, God honors when we’re feeling timid and nervous and yet we buck up and do it
anyway.
Throughout history, we can see leaders who had no idea what they were doing and yet continued
forward anyway. They were in a whole new situation, had no clue what was ahead, and still
followed their calling. An executive coach my husband meets with told him that most executives,
presidents, CEOs, and men and women in significant leadership positions feel like frauds. They
feel as if someone will “find out the truth” that they’re out of their depth and don’t belong in the
position after all.
Don’t we all feel that sometimes? When I first came home from the hospital with a tiny baby
in my arms, I realized I had no clue how to be a mother. I had read all the books and could spout
facts from all the websites, and yet once I had the responsibility in real life, it felt so very different
and scary.
I felt the same when I wrote my first book, when I started my own business, when God asked
me to start working with the women’s ministry at my church. Every new step of leadership we
take can make us feel supremely unqualified. But we can grasp tightly to what we know from the
book of Acts:
When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they
were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that
these men had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13, The Voice)
Jesus is with us, and because of that, we can do big things. We may be freaking out because an
opportunity is new and scary, but when we know we’re walking in alignment with His will, we
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