We often find getting ready and set is normally the easy part of any task we face in our lives. It can be more difficult to take the next step and go! God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous and this would come not from his own strength but from relying on what was written in God's law. Victory through submission was true for the Israelites, it was true for Joshua and it is true for us today. We need to submit our time to spend in God's word. The bible has been inspired by God. We need to saturate our life in reading it then apply and put into practice what we have read. If we seek to find true success in our life, then this will only come from spending time with God in His word.

We want to know what the future holds for us. As a Christian, there is a certainty in life because of what what God has does through His Son, Jesus Christ. John highlights that Jesus was God through His baptism and death, symbolised by the water and blood. As Christians, we can have the confidence that we will have eternal life with God and that He will hear and answer our prayers. We are reminded that all wrongdoing is sin, but it is Jesus Christ that keeps us safe from the evil one - we need to hand over our sinful life to Him. The Christian life is the real life we can have that focuses on Jesus Christ and not on the things that are temporary and do not offer eternal hope. Are you fully committed to Jesus Christ or to the things of this world?

When we show God's love to others, it is proof that we are walking with Jesus and that we have fellowship with God. Love is the very being of the nature of God and if we are united to God through Jesus Christ, then we will share in His nature. God's ultimate love for us was the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross so that we could be saved and have eternal life with Him. Is your focus towards God in showing His love in words and actions to others?

John's key message is to love God and to love others. There are 4 levels of relationship we can have with each other. (1) Murder, where someone is totally controlled by Satan to do such an evil act. (2) Hatred, where we walk in the darkness by not forgiving someone who may have done wrong by us. (3) Indifference, which is the total opposite of love by ignoring those who are in need. (4) Christian love, where we show self sacrificial love by giving up of ourselves everyday for the needs of others. Time is the thing most of us have little of and yet this is the greatest thing we can give of ourselves to others. Love is meeting the need of any person, at any time and at any cost.

All through his letter John has been drawing to contrasting groups of people. There is a group that walks in the light as Jesus is in the light and there is a group that lives in darkness. As we come to 1 John 3:10 we can see that these people are different because they belong to different families. John says they will either be children of God or children of the devil. We need to live in the light and be a part of the children of God.