Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)

Joshua is one of my favorite characters in the Bible.  He was bold, he was enthusiastic about God, and almost always saw the glass as half full.  He was my kind of guy.  The type of person I could see myself being friends with.  Let’s find out who he was and what God commissioned him to do!

The first time we meet Joshua in Scripture is when he came back from the land of giants with his friend Caleb.  Caleb said, “We can take those guys, no problem!”  That’s me paraphrasing it, of course!  There were 12 spies that went out and Joshua was one of two who came back believing they could go forward and overtake the land.  (Read Numbers 13:26-33)

Then we see Joshua is mentioned again a little later for the condition of his heart.

“Because they have not followed me wholeheartedly, not one of the men twenty years old or more who came up out of Egypt will see the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob– not one except Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite and Joshua son of Nun, for they followed the Lord, wholeheartedly.” (Numbers 32:11-12)

Read more