I am going through my journals and notes as I prepare to write another Bible Study. I am thinking this study will deal with Sanctification and when I found this journal entry from last year I thought it appropriate to share.
July 23, 2012
A tweet on the Desiring God website got me to thinking this morning. It said
“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."
Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”
It got me to thinking about what we teach as part of our Tiara Ladies about coming out of bondage and not going back as compared to the Israelites coming out of Egypt, which symbolized the world, and the thought that once we have freedom we are not to return to the bondage.
Well taking the analogy a step farther, we have the Israelites entering into the Promised Land and all that entailed. The land was occupied. Not only was it occupied, it was occupied by giants and very evil people. God told them through Joshua that they were to go in and conquer the land and make it their own.
Why was the land occupied? God told them He had allowed these evil people to live in the land so that it would be cultivated and built up, ready for the Israelites to come in and take possession. It had all been built for them!
How were they to take possession? By following and listening to everything God told them to do. When they did not follow directions, they were defeated. But when they did as they were told, miracles happened.
What does this look like in the Christian life? So this is where I started thinking about how this relates to us coming into the Promised Land….Kingdom Living and walking victoriously in the Spirit.
When we are saved, come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, it is like crossing over the Jordan. It is miraculous and completely done by God. There was nothing we could do to make our salvation happen. The only thing we could do is believe and accept what Jesus had done for us. So we crossed over from death to life. We are now in the Promised Land but it is not empty, it is full of all kinds of things and people; things that we do not like and may even scare us. Things that we may have naively thought would just disappear if we became a Christian and now we realize are still very much a part of the landscape.
Our Christian lives are therefore full of those things that were a part of our life before our salvation. Why? Because there is no such thing as a vacuum, something must fill the space. As a natural person, we had filled the space with all kinds of things and just because we get saved does not mean those things now leave, creating a vacuum. Instead, just like the Israelites, we must begin the process of removing the old and replacing it with the new. Now our life of sanctification begins. Which means this is the life of conquering that which is not of God, destroying what is evil, replacing it with God and enjoying the fruits of what is good.
But just like the Israelites we must go only in God’s strength and timing. He has a plan for our lives, what we need to conquer first, second, etc. We must follow His directions or we will get in trouble. If we go and try and destroy in our own strength we will be easily defeated or worse, we could think that we do not need God’s help. If we try and hold on to those things we are told to destroy, we will cause destruction to come into our lives and the lives of those around us. We cannot make any treaties with those things from our past, because they will become a snare and a trap in our lives leading us to worship things other than God.
Some of the stories that made me think of our Kingdom walk:
Jericho…followed God’s leading and a great victory
Achan…coveted things from the past and destroyed his family
Ai…went into battle without God because it was a little battle, thought they could handle it…lost many people
Jebusites…tricked into a treaty leaving behind a people in the land that were not Godly
Inter-marriage…allowed the customs of the people to influence them
Not completing the task….lead to following after the false gods, also leading lives of fear and bondage from invading groups of people
Getting tired…not having their own relationship with God but relying on Joshua, as soon as a strong leader died they would go back to sinning and worshiping false gods.
How then can we possibly live the victorious life that we desire to live? The answer is actually quite simple. The same way we were saved!!!! There is nothing we can do to become more like Jesus; which is the ultimate end for our Christian walk anymore than there was anything we could do to earn our salvation.
Stop striving! Stop trying to be good enough! Stop hiding! Realize that you are unique and God loves you right where you are. That Jesus longs to lead you step by step in the path that has been set out just for you. He will not leave you in the wilderness and He certainly will not leave you in bondage to anything you are willing to let Him free you from. All you need to do is believe and accept what He has for you.
Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying it will not be hard or take a lot of effort on your part once you accept and believe what Jesus has for you. But it will look more like the march around Jericho. The Israelites had to walk around the city everyday, in the heat and the dust with thousands of others. So you can imagine what a massive ordeal it could have been just getting everyone lined up each day and then marching. But you could tell it was God because at the end of the time of obedience the walls just fell down. Then they had the job of going into the fallen city and finish conquering what was left.
Our sins, faults, bondages, addictions, whatever, may live in walled and fortified cities or have chariots of iron and warriors that are giants, but if we realize what we have been saying here and that according to God’s Word they are defeated. We will be so far ahead that there will be no stopping us on our way to complete freedom. As was stated in the opening tweet:
“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."
Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”
God has a gift of freedom for you today, will you believe Him at His word and accept it?
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