Analyse This

Joshua is at the end of his journey, he has done whatever God had asked him to do. There is still more land to take(Joshua 13:1), however God has instructed Joshua to divide the land and the territories be given to individual tribes(Joshua 14:5). However for now, Israel and the land have peace with its enemies. In the next book (Judges) we'll see why capturing of many lands wasn't completed in Joshua's time.Right now, Joshua is quite old and is "about to go the way of all the earth"(Joshua 23:14). Within Joshua chapters 12-23 , we see how the land was divided between the various tribes. Now Joshua gives his farewell speech in Joshua 23

Here's what I found in Joshua's farewell message

1. Hope for the future-"The LORD your God himself will drive them out of your way. He will push them out before you, and you will take possession of their land, as the LORD your God promised you"(Joshua 23:5)
2. Encouragement to build that future-"The LORD has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. 10 One of you routs a thousand, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as he promised." (Joshua 23:9-10)
3. Command to follow the Lord-"Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. 7 Do not associate with these nations that remain among you; do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them. 8 But you are to hold fast to the LORD your God, as you have until now." (Joshua 23:6-8)
4. Warning for disobedience-"But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, 13 then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you" (Joshua 23:12-13)
5. Remembrance of what the Lord has done-" You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed." Joshua 23:14

In short, Joshua was giving them the secret of the successes he had in all the battles. He analysed his life in those verses, of how things went with him. Many times we fail to understand God's work in our lives, because we fail to analyse our lives and see how we came, from where we were. More often than not, I find encouragement by seeing whats happening in my life. Our life itself teaches us lessons. We learn through our experiences . Experience is the best teacher.
There is a popular saying, "A burnt child dreads fire", now, if the burnt child forgets the lesson he learnt from getting burnt, he will get burnt again, because he does not analyse how fire burnt him and what consequences he faced. So also, when we fail to analyse our lives of how God worked, during our obedience and our disobedience-times of glory, times of shame we'll start failing too. Life's lessons teach us every day, what to do what not to do. Let's analyse our lives, we and somebody else may a learn a lot from it.

God Bless.