Long ago, centuries before the advent of the self-help guru or the first however-many-easy-steps-to-whatever article was written, a formula guaranteeing prosperity and success was given, received and proven completely effective. This was some 3,500 years ago. The recipients of the guarantee immediately faced thirty-two major challenges. In thirty-one of those challenges they followed the plan and were successful. In the one that they didn’t follow the plan, they failed miserably. The guarantee was valid then, and it’s still valid today.
Moses was dead. But what God had given Moses was very much alive. God had given him the promise that this generation of Israelites would enter and occupy the land He had sworn to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He had given Moses the anointing to lead this Jewish nation that He verified with miracle after miracle. Most importantly, He had given Moses the Law. All these gifts were still alive; they just needed to be transferred to the leader God would use next. Enter Joshua.
As Joshua prepared himself and the Hebrew people for the mission – entering the land of Canaan – God delivered to Joshua the timeless foolproof formula for success. It had everything to do with God’s Law, which He had given through Moses. And the formula was very simple:
- Think
- Speak
- Do
Think. The word God actually used for Joshua was meditate. Meditation in the ancient Hebrew sense is in some ways the very opposite of the way many people use it today. When people do meditations today, they’re attempting to achieve mental clarity and emotional calmness.
Biblical meditation is about filling the mind, not clearing it. And the way that’s done is by cycling the message of God through the mind over and over, constantly throughout the day and through the night. It’s doing mentally what cattle and some other animals do physically. These animals have more than one stomach, so when they first swallow their food they aren’t done with it. They bring it up again later and chew it some more. After a series of chewings and swallowings, their food is finally assimilated (the nutrients become living tissue, actually part of the animal’s body)
That’s what God wanted for Joshua and his generation, that His Law would become part of who they were. For that to happen, they would need to follow His instructions to rehearse His precepts when they sat at home, when they walked down the road, when they lay down and when they rose again. Later, King Solomon would pen that a person becomes whatever they embrace mentally. To Joshua God was calling in advance for him to live out this truth He would reveal in a few hundred years through the wisdom of Solomon.
This formula for us today, because of Jesus and the covenant He established for us, expands to include more than the Law of Moses. For us, it means the law of Christ or the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote. The law of Christ is simply: believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son for salvation. It also includes all of New Testament Scripture and the light it sheds on the Old Testament.
Speak. Let every word you say be My Law, whether as a direct quote or in keeping with it’s meaning, God was essentially saying to Joshua. That was the second part of the formula for success, although God actually said it first, before mentioning the meditating/thinking part of the instruction.
Jesus would later teach that our words ultimately flow from whatever is in our hearts or minds, so our success in the speak piece depends much on what we do with the think piece.
Still, as James taught through his epistle, it’s wise to be intentional with our words, rather than just leaving our speech up to the natural flow from our hearts’ contents.
The bottom line is this: everything we say should line up with God’s Word.
Do. The whole reason for the think and speak parts of this guarantee is to impact our behavior. If we can act in accordance with what God has spoken, success is ours, guaranteed.
A point I should have made in the beginning is that success is defined as achieving what God has instructed us to achieve. It’s just like God to require something of us and then give us everything we need to meet it. That’s what He’s done here. He’s given us a very simple formula that guarantees our success. Then He’s given us His Word, His Son and His Spirit. He’s given us His guarantee. All that’s left is for us to follow the formula.
Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; but meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8)