Thursday, August 6, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Joshua 14-15
Key Verse
Joshua 15:25 — “And Hazor, Hadattah, and Kerioth, and Hezron, which is Hazor,”
Devotional Thought
Caleb was eighty-five years old when he came to Joshua at Gilgal, and the thing he asked for was a mountain still occupied by giants. Forty-five years earlier he had stood in the same wilderness of Kadeshbarnea as one of twelve spies, and while ten men made the people’s hearts melt with fear, Caleb wholly followed the LORD his God. Moses swore on that day that the land his feet had trodden would be his inheritance forever. Now, decades later, the promise had not faded with his strength. “As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me,” he told Joshua, and then he named the very place the Anakims fortified: “Give me this mountain.” Here is the faith that does not merely wait on God but asks Him for the hard thing, the fenced city, the high ground where the enemy still dwells.
Most of us know something about long waits. A promise given in one season and not fulfilled until another; a prayer carried through years of wilderness wandering while others around us lose heart. Caleb’s story meets us in the ordinary middle of life, where enthusiasm has worn thin and the mountain still looks unconquerable. Notice what he did not do: he did not ask for an easy valley, a quiet retirement, or a plot already cleared. He asked for Hebron, the burial place of the fathers, the city of Arba, the great man among the Anakims. Faith at eighty-five is not nostalgia; it is still marching uphill. And when Joshua blessed him and gave him Hebron, Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak, and the land had rest from war.
The chapter that follows is mostly borders and city lists, and we are tempted to skim it. But every line of it is a promise kept. Judah’s lot runs from the salt sea to the river of Egypt, from Ekron to Gaza, through the mountains and the wilderness; Beersheba and Hebron and Debir all named and allotted, because God remembers what He says. Even the small request of Achsah, Caleb’s daughter, is answered generously: she asked her father for springs of water, and he gave her the upper and the nether springs. God’s faithfulness is not stingy. He gives the mountain and the water both.
Yet the chapter ends with a shadow: “the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.” Not every enemy was driven out. The inheritance was real, but it was also unfinished, held by faith that had to keep working. That is where we live too, in a season of August when the year’s first vigor has passed and the harvest is not yet in. We have received promises, and we have also left some ground unclaimed. Caleb’s example is not a rebuke but an invitation: at whatever age, in whatever weariness, ask God for the mountain, and then go up and take it, trusting that if the LORD be with us, we shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.
Reflection
- What “mountain” has God promised you that you have quietly stopped asking for because the Anakims still seem too strong?
- Where in your life have you settled for dwelling alongside an enemy rather than driving it out, and what would wholehearted obedience look like this week?
Prayer
LORD God of Caleb, who keeps His promises across forty-five years and gives mountains to those who wholly follow You: forgive us for the ground we have left unclaimed and the prayers we have let go silent. Strengthen us in this season, as You strengthened Caleb at eighty-five, to ask boldly for the hard inheritance and to go up against what still opposes us. Give us Hebron, and give us springs of water besides; let the land have rest from war. And when we look back over our own wilderness years, may we say with him that You have kept us alive and kept Your word. In the name of Jesus, Amen.