The Battles Are In the Promised Land

I've been attending the Minister's Intensive Training Conference (M.I.T.) this week in Waxahachie, TX.  It is held by a ministry network called Fellowship of Connected Churches and Ministries (FCCM).  The keynote speaker is Alan Wright, Senior Pastor of the historic and dynamic Reynolda Church, an Evangelical Presbyterian Congregation, in Winston-Salem, NC.  He wrote a life-changing book years ago called Shame Off You that deals with the subject of shame and getting to the root of it in our lives.

He's been sharing a lot from the book of Joshua, and I have been totally blown away by many of his insights and revelations. He began on Monday night and continued in the session the next morning by taking the story of Israel and showing how their journey from slavery to the Promised Land illustrates our journey from sin to rest, and the battle with one of our biggest enemies:  fear.  

Israel was enslaved in Egypt, but was delivered by God through Moses, because the first step to coming out of fear-based living is coming out of bondage.  The big narrative is of a people that have been made God’s people.  They come out of slavery (Egypt) into freedom, but the difficulty comes when they have to take dominion in the Promised Land.  Coming out of bondage (Egypt) was easy, so, it shouldn’t surprise us that leading people into freedom is a lot easier than leading people into dominion.

Entering into rest is the challenge, because wandering in the wilderness comes when people get to the point of entering into rest (i.e., the Promised Land), but then turn back because of fear.

 

The people are brought into the wilderness to journey towards the Promised Land.  When they arrived at the border of the Promised Land, Moses sent spies into the land, and 10 of the 12 brought back a bad report. The inhabitants of the land were giants, and even though the land was good, they were convinced that they could never defeat the inhabitants of Canaan.  The people were AFRAID...they were afraid that they would be killed if they attempted to go into the Promised Land. So, they were sentenced to wander in the wilderness until that generation died off, and the next generation was brought again to the Jordan River where Joshua, Moses' successor, would lead them into the Promised Land. 

The Wilderness was the place of doubting, death, and dying.  Between bondage and inheritance is wilderness.  The place called rest, the Promised land, is going to have the potential of bringing anxiety and fear, so God tells Joshua three times not to be afraid, but to be courageous in order to enter that rest. 

God tells Joshua in Joshua 1:  "Moses, my servant, is dead."  This is God’s one opportunity to “rally the troops,” and he does so by reminding Joshua that Moses is dead.  Seems sort of defeating in a way, but actually this is the beginning point of entering rest.  "The representative of the move of God to you, Joshua, and the picture of the way I moved on the earth,  he’s dead.  But, you are NOT dead, Joshua.  There are things that Moses didn’t do, but you’re going to do, Joshua.  We’re moving out from Moses (“The Lord Draws Out” of slavery) to Joshua (“the Lord Saves").  Moses was the vehicle of deliverance…you are going to be the vehicle of the promised inheritance."

Part of entering the rest is that every entry into a new promised land requires an acceptance that the means by which you came to the new promised land was good, but must now die.  That's hard, because it means things are constantly changing.  Without the death of Moses, the Joshua of the Promised Land would not have emerged.

Even though there was fighting and skirmishes in the wilderness, Israel had never seen battle like they would when they went into the Promised Land.  While the Promised Land represented rest and inheritance, it was filled with battles and fighting.

Sounds a little contradictory, doesn't it?  How can we enter a place of rest when the journey there is filled with battles and conflict?  If we are going to enter the rest that God has for us, then there will be struggle and fighting to do so, but not with swords and spears.

Hebrews 4:9 - 11:

    

"So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
(Hebrews 4:9-11 ESV)

What sort of disobedience caused Israel to have to wander in the wilderness?  I believe it was the disbelief that God would do what He said He would do, which drove them to reject His commands to go into the Promised Land.  It was the same lack of trust that caused Adam and Eve to sin...they doubted that God was as good as He said He was.

 No wonder God told Joshua three times in the 1st chapter to be strong and courageous, the last of which He adds :Do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."  

What kind of courage could we move in...what kind of confidence could we walk in if we really believed that the Lord was with us wherever we went? 

Pastor Alan says:

Fear leads us into failure in the same way that faith moves us into success.This is the message that God is giving to His people: that He is always with them.  As soon as the fears are there, it not only has the potential to lead them into the very thing they fear, but it brings the stress that makes them miserable.

Of course, when we are trying to live under Law, then we live in a mentality that if we don't do certain things certain ways without fail, God will NOT be with us.  However, as Pastor Alan says:

The Scriptures are brimming with the Lord saying, “I will never take my steadfast love from you."  You don’t have bring back much of the Law to introduce an unlimited potential for fear.  Whatever we’re talking about in striving to enter the rest, if we’re going to fight for something, we’re going to fight not to put ourselves under the law, or putting our people under the law. 

Pastor Alan told a story of a man who had held a father and his son hostage.  That night, the boy and the criminal fell asleep, but the father didn't.  He walked over to the man, took his gun, removed all the bullets, and placed the gun back into the criminal's hand.  The next day, the criminal threatened to shoot the boy if the man didn't do as he was told, but the father looked at the son and told him to run into his arms.  The boy had to make a decision...to obey his father whom he loved, or to remain in the clutches of the criminal because of fear.  But, he trusted his father and ran into his arms as the criminal shot the gun, but to no effect because there were no bullets.

How quickly would we be willing to respond to our Heavenly Father if we knew the enemy's gun wasn't loaded?  What if we trusted God with no thought to the consequences because God is trustworthy and won't go back on His Word?  Again, Pastor Alan:

If faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God, then the well spring of faith is believing the Word of God.  If faith is rooted in truth, then fear is rooted in deception.  Deception is a perversion of the truth.  As soon as deception comes, then fear has a place to attach itself.  Fear is a belief (belief, belief system).   

So, fear comes from a belief.  Just like Israel's disobedience came from not believing that God was good, our fears come from a belief...a belief that you can't trust God because we haven't done everything just right...that somehow  God is always mad at us because we are always falling short.

Fear envisions a negative future outcome based on a lie.  Faith envisions a positive future outcome based on the promises of God that moves us in that direction.

Make no mistake about it...if we intend to enter the rest of God, it's going to take some striving; striving to stay out from under the law and as a pastor, striving to not bring my congregation under the law.  Only then can we really move in faith as a son or daughter of the Kingdom, working alongside our Father in the family business of making disciples of all nations.