Joshua was a mixture of temperaments. He was a mixture of expressive and driver. Those are two natural leadership temperaments aren't they?

Expressive and driver temperaments are natural leaders, because they are very assertive and strong and they go ahead of the pack. God was dealing with Joshua's natural temperaments, and He dealt with his expressive nature first.

What is an expressive temperament like? An expressive thrives on excitement. He thrives on a challenge and having a goal to attain.

Well there is nothing terribly exciting about taking a stupid, insignificant little city like Ai. They would not be publishing it in the local news on the front page and saying,

"Yesterday the Children of Israel rallied together and went and conquered the mighty metropolis of Ai."

It was not big news. It was an insignificant little city, so why should Joshua bother with it?

He said, "Oh I'll pass it off to somebody else to do the dirty work. I don't feel like doing it. There's nothing exciting about that. Why should I bother? Give me another Jericho, Lord. I'm ready for that. I know how to do the Jericho thing. I can handle a few more of them, not Ai."

Can you see it? Have you been there, expressive? God gives you a task to do and you think it's so insignificant and unimportant; so unexciting that you pass the buck to somebody else to do. Then it collapses around your knees, and you want to wallow in self-pity, cry and say,

"Why me Lord?"

There was no challenge to taking Ai; none whatsoever. Anybody could have taken that city. There was no excitement and no challenge. There was no goal to be reached in taking Ai like there was with Jericho.

Jericho was a goal. That was something nobody had ever done before. That was a goal to be attained. It was something that inspires an expressive, that gets him going and keeps him going. He lives and dreams and lies awake at night thinking of what it will be like to attain that goal.

But you are not lying awake at night tossing and turning, and not going to sleep at the excitement and the prospect of this wonderful goal of conquering a little two-horse town.

Joshua was too concerned about,

What will people think?

Have you ever heard those famous words?

"Ooh, what will people say? This great big Joshua; this mighty general took his hoards to go and conquer a little city with just a handful of people in it. Oh what a big man. What will people say?"

A Need for Recognition

Joshua still had too much of a need for recognition. With Jericho God dealt with his natural strengths. At Ai God began to deal with Joshua's need for recognition. And I will show you how strong this was in him by the way that he responded to what happened at Ai.

In Joshua 7:8, as Joshua was weeping, wailing and groveling before the Lord, he said these words:

O Lord, what shall I say, when Israel turns their backs before their enemies.

"How am I going to tell people? Lord, I'm humiliated. What are people going to think? What are they going to say? These great big wonderful Israelites that have conquered all these nations and have taken the great city of Jericho, they turned and ran.

"I mean, if they had at least gone into the battle and got beaten we would say, 'Oh well the Ai guys are pretty good. They put up a good fight, and Israel were good but there just weren't enough of them. So it's just tough luck. We'll just have to send some more guys and we'll get them.' "

Nobody is going to condemn you for that. But now here are these great strong Israelites going to battle, and all the Ai guys do is come out against them and they turn tail and run.

"Cowards! What will people say? What are people going to think about me as the leader of this mob? They're going to say, 'Is that how he taught them to fight? Is that how he trained them? Maybe these Israelites aren't so hot after all.' "

Passing it to the Lord

Then Joshua became spiritual and said,

"After all, what am I going to say when people ask me? I'll turn this one back on the Lord. Lord, it's your reputation that's at stake you know. Didn't you know that? I bet you'd never noticed that, Lord. Did you think about it?"

In Joshua 7:9 he says:

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land shall hear [of it], and shall surround us, and cut off our name from the earth: and what will that do to your great reputation?

"What are they going to say about you, Lord? What are people going to think about you? I just know that it would bring God to His knees and He would have said, 'We've got to do something about this.' "

Joshua was convinced it was going to move God. It was going to move Him and He was going to say,

"No, we can't allow that to happen."

God really needs recognition you know. Can you see how deceived you can be when you are caught in the syndrome of needing recognition? You start grasping at straws.

I remember a preacher who was publicly challenged concerning healing for today. He thought he would be a great big hero. He publicly challenge somebody to bring all the sick people, and he would pray for them and they would get healed.

He was going to honor God's name. He was going to prove to these people that God is real and God does heal today.

But you see he wasn't doing it for God's reputation. He was doing it for his own, and he failed miserably. He made a fool of himself and had to publicly on television, apologize to the nation for his arrogance.

Don't drag God into your agenda and make Him party to your selfish ambition. Don't do it; you will come short if you do.

Depression Starts

So Joshua started what we call a cycle of depression. He responded incorrectly to the situation and immediately it began to affect his feelings. It is described quite well there in Joshua 7:6:

And Joshua tore his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD [Yahweh] until the evening, he and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.

This great big general was groveling in the dirt here. Then in verse 7 it says:

And Joshua said, Oh Lord GOD, why have you brought this people over the Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us? If only we had been satisfied, and dwelt on the other side of Jordan.

As I shared in the passage right at the beginning, God had to rebuke him. He said,

"Joshua just stop groveling. Get up now!"

I know somebody else who did that. He got himself into a cycle of depression, sat down and wept and wailed and said,

"Oh God, take my life because I don't want to live anymore."

That was all because some woman threatened his life. You know who I am talking about. It was Elijah the prophet. He had just been and faced the prophets on Mount Carmel and called fire down from Heaven.

He had done a mighty thing. He was another expressive who had reached his goal, then responded incorrectly to the first little problem that hit him.

Joshua had just done the same thing. He had faced this mighty goal of conquering Jericho, and now the first little problem that he was faced with and he wanted to die. A mighty leader he was, huh?

Don't laugh; you have been there. You thought you were the great big mighty leader that God had called and raised up to be an apostle to the Body of Christ.

You were going to lead the church on to victory. You were going to stir everybody up. You were going to motivate people and bring their ministries out, and get people moving into the new move that God has.

You were just going to mobilize the whole Body of Christ. You were going to be famous, you would be on TV, and you were going to preach to the crowds. Now some stupid little Ai got in your way and you wanted to die.

You said, "Why did I even bother with this thing in the first place. Lord, why did you even lead me to get into this ministry? Why did you lead me to start this whole thing? Lord why?"

The first sign of depression is when you start saying,

"Why me, Lord?"

False Guilt

Then comes the next part that causes depression. It is false guilt. You start to think,

"Hang on, I must have messed up here didn't I? That is what happened; I messed up. You know what? I was greedy. You know, God had given us just such good blessing. We were sitting on the other side of the Jordan.

"We had conquered some of the land. Moses had given some of that land away to some of the people. Hey, we were getting our food free every day. We had the rock with water. We had everything we needed.

"But no that wasn't enough. We had to be greedy. We wanted to go in and take this big land of milk and honey. I mean we weren't satisfied with water. We wanted milk and honey. I was greedy, Lord. Yes, that's what it was. Oh Lord, if only I had been satisfied just to stay there. I'm so stupid."

You start wallowing in false guilt and accusation. And Satan is there to help you along the way.

Listen, when you faced your Ai yes you failed, but that is not where you failed. You never failed by having too big a vision. You never failed by going out and doing what God called you to do.

That is not where your failure is. But God is dealing with the things that will stand in the way before you can accomplish that big vision. And before He will let you go on and take the land, He is going to take you through that Ai just to bring you down a little bit.

It will deal with that need for recognition that you have, as well as all the other weaknesses in you that have to be removed before He can use you.

Consult the Lord

Joshua's biggest mistake of all was that he left consulting the Lord until last instead of doing that first. We are all guilty of that at some time or another aren't we?

We think, "Well you know this is a simple problem. I don't need to bother the Lord with it. I can handle this one on my own. I mean, God is busy."

Rubbish! Don't come and get super-spiritual with me. You didn't bother asking the Lord because you thought you could handle it on your own, Mr Hotshot.

You say, "Well I'm the great apostle. I've handled bigger things than this in the past. I can surely handle something like this."

I don't care. You are under submission to the authority of Almighty God, and He is the one who sent you out to do this job. You don't lift a finger; you don't take a step forward without hearing His voice. You don't take one more step in any direction without first hearing His voice.

What was God saying to Joshua when they reached Ai? Joshua didn't bother to give him a chance to speak. It was a cardinal error. Don't be caught in it. Don't make a single move without taking time to wait on the Lord and to get revelation first.