After Joshua led the people to their first biggest victory against Jericho, then they faced a DEFEAT at Ai afterward. What?!? It's almost as if we were watching the best basketball team winning the first game in the season against the 2nd bestest team. Then they were overconfident that they were defeated by the lousiest team! C'mon, ballers! But they learned from it and won the rest of the games to get a winning season of 25-1 to end well! Dang, that little clumsy loss helped them to big time! No defeat, no gain.
"I will be with you no more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Get up!" the Lord told Joshua. So Joshua got up to accepted the defeat and with His guidance he patiently called tribe to tribe. Then clan to clan, then family to family, then member to member before he singled out Achan and removed Achan from his people. Then with the right foundation, Israel went up against the city with renewed strength.
In the same way, we may face a defeat once in our lifetime, but our defeat is a tool that we can use to learn how to win big! We will need to have Joshua's patience to look for something in our lives that caused the defeat. When we found the cause of the defeat, we will need to remove something from our lives like how Joshua removed Achan. Everything has to begin with the right foundation, we will have to build our godly characters in the right way before we can lead or walk into His victories.
It is your call to "get up" and be grateful for the defeat or to "crawl with facedown" and say I was defeated...
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