Week 9: Joshua - Judges 12

Chapters 7 through 24 of the book of Joshua are what I'm focusing on this week. Joshua gives a beautiful discourse to the children of Israel in the last two chapters of his book which sum things up very nicely. I really like verses 14 - 16 of chapter 24:

• "Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods"

God performs so many miracles for the Israelites - fighting their battles for them, causing the earth to stop rotating so it appeared the the sun stood still in the sky (Joshua 10:12-14), delivering them from their enemies, and destroying the inhabitants of the land that God promised to give them.

After all the things they had seen, you'd think it would be easy for them to forsake all other gods and serve only their God, but that was not the case. Eventually they forgot...

Every day we face that same choice -- will we use our agency to choose good, or will we fall to temptations and choose evil? We can all see the hand of God in our own lives if we look with eyes to see (Mark 8:18; 2 Nephi 16:10).

• "O Lord, I have ^atrusted in thee, and I will ^btrust in thee forever. I will not put my ^ctrust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his ^dtrust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm." (2 Nephi 4:34)
  

Will we choose to remember the many good things He has done for us, then trust Him and follow Him?