Joshua succeeded ultimately because he learned to hear God’s commands and to obey them. Before the victories in Canaan, he had learned to linger in God’s presence. (Ex 33:11) He learned to wait for God’s instructions (his encounter with the commander of the army of the Lord was critical for providing him with the strategy he needed to take Jericho, as Joshua 5 & 6 make plain.)
There is never a substitute for time spent in God’s presence. These times may well seem ‘ordinary’ to us (we may not feel transformed from our regular times of prayer or feel God speaks to us each time we meet with him), but as we discipline ourselves to set time aside, to read God’s word, to listen for His voice (see John 10), we are given the blueprints we need to achieve the miraculous. Time spent with God is the single most important factor in whether we will ever see the miraculous in our own lives, for it is here, in our own ‘tabernacle trysts’, that we encounter the Divine and are led by the Spirit.
Each generation must experience the miracles of God for themselves. The rest of the people of Israel had only heard about the parting of the Red Sea. Only Joshua and Caleb among them had actually witnessed that miraacle. But as the River Jordan parted for them, they saw God work personally for them and their faith rose (Joshua 3) We need to move from the academic (a head knowledge that God is able to do miracles) to the personal (that He will do miracles for us. Miracles underline for us that God is real and that He works on behalf of His people. We pray with the psalmist, ‘Summon Your power, God; show us Your strength, our God, as You have done before.’ (Ps 68:28)
