Thursday, July 28, 2011

Stake your claim!


God gave Joshua an assignment that must have brought great joy to Joshua. God appointed him to divide the land among the Israelites. That would have been good news for a couple of reasons. First of all, if God gave him instructions to divide the land, that was confirmation that God was going to defeat their enemies and give them possession of the land. But there is more reason for rejoicing.

Think about this…God gave Joshua the privilege of telling the people what they had been given as the chosen people of God.

And we can rejoice in that assignment as well because that’s exactly what God has called the leaders in His kingdom to do today. One of the most important roles teachers, preachers, ministers, and all believers have today is to tell believers what they have in Christ!

Sadly, many Christians hear more about what they lack than they do about what they have. They hear more about what they are NOT supposed to do than they do about what they CAN do through Christ. Since they don’t know what they have in Christ they spend their lives trying to get what God has already given them. We are joint heirs with Christ. Everything that He has belongs to us as well. We are complete in Him. His inheritance is our inheritance. We don’t have to wait for it and we certainly don’t have to earn it. We get it simply because we are children of God.

“16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” Romans 8:16-17

And notice that we have already been given everything we need for life!

“2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, 4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises…” II Peter 1:2-4a


Like the Israelites, we have been given an unconditional gift from God. Through Christ, we have everything we need. Everything that Jesus has is ours; His faith, His wisdom, His strength, His power. It is all available to us. It is our Promised Land. It is our inheritance.

Everything we need for life and for living a Godly life is ours. It’s an unconditional gift of the grace of God. But just like the Israelites, whether or not we live out of the abundant life God has given us is conditional on us following His leadership all the way to the life He has for us.

So many Christians get stuck in the wilderness because they have crossed the Red Sea into salvation, but they stopped short of crossing the Jordan into God’s promised land of His abundant, victorious life. It’s ours, but we don’t live in it.

God wants us to stake our claim - take possession and live in the abundant land that He has given us as believers. We can quit walking in spiritual poverty and live out of the riches of the Kingdom of God!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Wandering and wondering....

In preparation for the release of my new book looking at the Book of Joshua, I'll be posting some excerpts from it here.

Do you ever feel as if you are wandering through life and you wonder why? Well, you are not the first.

At the Red Sea, with deep water before them and Pharaoh’s army behind them, the Israelites found themselves in an impossible situation. If God didn’t make a way, they would either die or be taken back into captivity. But God miraculously parted the Red Sea and they crossed over on dry land. Safe on the other side, they looked back as the army chasing them was crushed by the violent return of the walls of water into the dry sea bed.

But that miracle and all the miracles that followed weren’t enough to convince the Hebrew nation that God could do the impossible. They continued to murmur and complain on the entire journey to the place where they could finally cross over to take possession of the Promised Land; the land that was already theirs. The group they sent to spy out the land returned with reports of a beautiful land, flowing with milk and honey. But sadly the reports also included facts about the inhabitants of the land. They were described as strong giants who lived in fortified cities.

The people were struck with fear. Only two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, spoke in favor of going on to claim the land under God’s leadership and protection. All the others were paralyzed and willing to settle for less than God had given them. They owned Canaan, but they refused to take possession of it.

As a result, that generation of Israelites was destined for an aimless life wandering around in the wilderness instead of an abundant life in their promised land. They were owners of the richest of lands, but they lived the rest of their lives in a vast wasteland because they were afraid to take possession of their bountiful inheritance.

It’s a perfect picture of the lives of most modern day Christians. We don’t exercise the courage, the drive, and the wisdom to live in the abundance of what we have already been given. Either we don’t know what we have inherited in Christ so we live in mediocrity and failure, or we know what our inheritance is and we refuse to take possession of it.

We are joint heirs with Christ. Everything He has is ours as well. That is our inheritance. But we haven’t taken possession of it. Over and over we stand at the point where we can cross over to live in the abundance of His power, His provisions, His righteousness…His LIFE. And over and over, out of ignorance, fear, or apathy, we settle for spiritual poverty and aimless wandering in spiritual wilderness.

If that is happening to you there is no need to wonder why...The answer is crystal clear. God never intended for us to wander in the wilderness. He has given us abundant life and if we will follow Him, He will lead us right to it and do everything that needs to be done for us to experience it fully!

Friday, July 22, 2011

What God's doing now...

It's been a while since I've posted...And I've been through a lot in the past two years. Today God drew me back to some old videotapes of previous speaking engagements. I watched them and realized that I have lost something. Well, let me re-phrase that. Actually, I haven't lost anything. I just forgot for a while that I have everything I need for life and godliness. Im suddenly remembering again that I have everything I need to do anything that God calls me to do in His power and strength. God is showing up in a fresh new way and I have had to face the fact that He has been showing up all along and waiting for me to join Him in what He was doing.

He is reminding me that what I have is Christ...His power...His faith...His love...I can speak to Him and know that He will listen and respond in whatever way is best for me. I can listen to Him and know that He will speak clearly to me. I can do all things through Him.

What I have been realizing over the last few months is that I once spoke boldly and with confidence when I spoke of Him. And the stress of dealing with things that have happened in our churches, in the world, and in my family have pretty much just sucked the joy and confidence out of my awareness. It's still there because it's the joy of the Lord and it's confidence in what He can do. But I've just taken responsibility to handle things that have never been my responsibility to handle. I've tried to fix things God never expected me to fix. I've let things and people bring me down and distract me from where I should always be focused.

And that has caused me to operate almost on auto-pilot. I knew the truth. I taught the truth. But I failed to live the truth. Even though I taught the full truth of God's grace every Sunday morning and many times during the week too, I neglected to apply it to my own life.

God never moved. He has not left me. He did not forsake me. I knew that all along. But I've learned that I need to constantly remind myself of the truth I know so well! I've learned that if I don't, even the teacher is capable of forgetting the lessons she teaches others!

I don't know how often I'll post to this blog. I don't even know if anyone will ever read this post. That doesn't matter. I just wanted to record in some special way that God has brought me out of a low spot...a low spot where I planted my feet and dug in my heels for a while... and He has set my feet on a rock...a rock that's on higher ground than I've experienced in quite some time.

The joy is back...the excitement of waiting to see what God is going to do next is back...the assurance that God is in control even over situations that seem impossible is back too. And my desire for the things of God is back in it's appropriate place in my life. It's top priority!

And most of all, I'm experiencing the peace that passes understanding and the faith that moves mountains again!

And I like it!

with Debbie Childers