Sword & Trowel 2019: Issue 1
shortcomings, and repent and pledge ourselves to advance. We undertake to examine ourselves daily.
10 LOVE THE LORD
Joshua proceeds to the tenth resolu- tion which is the second part of the sentence: ‘Take good heed there- fore…that ye love the Lord your God.’ Have I loved him from the heart, thanked him, appreciated him, and refl ected on his mercy and goodness? Have I thought of all his eternal at- tributes, and his mercies towards me? If we love someone we listen to that person. We want to be with them, see them, speak of them, and we are loyal to them. Has this been the case with me before the Lord? In the loving of God the place of secret prayer is not a chore but a relief and a pleasure where trials and sorrows are eclipsed by a profound sense of safety under his mighty arm. My pledge is: I will love my Lord
every day that he gives me, with all my heart.
11 FEAR THE LORD For the eleventh resolution we must go to chapter 24, verse 14: ‘Now therefore fear the Lord.’ When we see this word fear in the Bible we have a tendency to interpret it as re- spect or reverence, which is right, but we should not exclude the element of apprehensive fear. Even a born-again Christian must fear the Lord in some measure. We should fear his indignation when we act the hypocrite, or when we are unkind and unreasonable to people around us, or when we are unforgiving. That is made clear in the Lord’s Prayer. Equally, when we are dishonest, we should fear the Lord’s indignation. Some blessing will be removed from us, some joy, some peace. The Lord’s indignation will be shown even to- wards those he loves. So we must remember to fear the Lord, having reverence certainly, but also feel- ing a real fear of his frown, and this fear should intensify our suppres- sion of sinful thoughts, acts and words. My resolu- tion is to fear the Lord; to fear offending
‘Joshua command- ing the sun to stand still upon Gibeon’ by John Martin, a representation of the events of Joshua 10.12-14.
Joshua’s Sixteen Resolutions page 9
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