Bill Johnson - God Has Equipped You With Promise
Thinking about this story of entering the promised land and how it is so prophetic for us as a people, Paul actually wrote about the Old Testament. He said in Romans, I think it’s 15, that these things were written in earlier times for our instruction. So, Paul was saying we need this, and so many believers ignore the Old Testament; it is the root system for the gospel. It’s critical that we pray and learn to understand and read, and some of these stories are just food for my soul, and I enjoy them so much.
This story is about Moses. He chose 12 spies, leaders from each tribe—let me put it this way, highly valued, highly respected leaders—one from each tribe, sending them into the promised land to examine what they were about to inherit. This is such a bizarre story to me because God promised Israel, let’s estimate about two million people in Egypt, that they would inherit the promised land. Yet, out of two million people, only two entered. Some would say, well, if God promised it, it’s just going to happen—that’s just not true.
Larry Randolph helped us with this concept the best; he said God will fulfill all of his promises but he’s not obligated to fulfill our potential. Wow! Some words are given to us as invitations to co-labor with the Lord, to step into destiny. One of the most challenging parts of this story is that there is conflict that precedes arriving at destiny. There is always an obstacle to keep you from your destiny, and the obstacle is not there for our destruction; it is there for our strengthening. It’s in the obstacle that the will of God becomes reaffirmed and established in us.
From day one, it has always been about co-laboring with the Lord. The whole thing has been about co-laboring with the Lord. He commissioned Adam and Eve to be fruitful, multiply, fill the Earth, etc. It’s always been about co-laboring, about working together. It’s never been about God doing everything for us, nor does he require us to work independently of him. All of his commandments, none of them are punishment; all of his commandments are invitations to life, partnerships.
So that’s what we have in this story. I want to take you through a good part of chapter 13. We’ll read about half a dozen verses or so, and then we’ve got something to find in chapter 14. All right, so you there? Numbers chapter 13. We’ll start with verse 28.
«And they told him, saying, 'We went to the land where you sent us; it truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.'» Which is interesting because it took two men to carry one bunch of grapes out; it was so huge. Nevertheless, verse 28, «The people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified, and very large. Moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south; the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, the Gergashites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites all dwell by the sea along the banks of the Jordan.»
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, «Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome.» Let me jump on this just with this one phrase: «Let us go up at once.» I’ve seen—I have obeyed the Lord, but I did it in delay, and in my delayed obedience, I saw this happen. Trust me on this, if you would: delayed obedience reduced the power released in my obedience. Wow! Whereas when I have acted quickly in obedience, there was a tremendous release of power.
It’s like the Lord honored the obedience but it didn’t have near the fruitfulness that he intended it to have because I delayed. I debated, evaluated, and tried to bring God’s will into my human reasoning to figure it out, and it restricted the effect of my obedience. So Caleb is at a moment where if he can get Israel to act quickly, they will respond to see tremendous triumph, and so that’s what he’s trying to do.
So he says, «Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.»
Verse 31: «The men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we, ' and they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the giants, the descendants of Anak, who came from the giants, and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, so we were in their sight.'»
Here’s the crazy thing about the ten spies: to Israel, they were reasonable, and there’s such a fear of being labeled as unreasonable. The people actually chose unbelief over faith. The crazy thing about this is the ten spies came back with a negative report about the size of the giants, and their negative report became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They warned Israel, and their bad report actually became contagious, and the people embraced bad news over good news, which is really common.
We live at a time where the enemy works very hard to make us feel and appear as victims, not victors. The strategy is to inundate us with enough negative reports and bad news, which we sometimes call discernment to sound spiritual, bad news to keep us from destiny. Paul already told Timothy, «Fight your fight for your destiny with the prophetic words given to you.»
So Paul was saying, from where you’re standing to where you’re going, there’s a conflict in between, and you’re going to need prophetic words to get you there. You’re going to need to use as weapons what God has said. Now, how do you use the word of the Lord? You speak it. Things have to be said.
I don’t know if you realize this, but before Jesus performed one miracle, he stood before a group of people. He had no history in the miraculous; he stood before a group of people and made this proclamation: «The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, the lame are going to walk.» He goes through this whole thing before he’s done anything. Why? Because he’s making a proclamation. Your words announce where you’re going.
If I’ve asked you this before, if God inhabits my praise, who inhabits my complaints? Words attract presence, and you and I determine what presence we want to attract. Sometimes we create landmines along our road to destiny through our words, and there’s this warning here because we see it illustrated so graphically where ten spies were able to take the heart out of an entire nation—ten people.
It’s interesting when Joshua sent spies the next time; he only sent two. It’s a lot easier to get two united than twelve. I don’t know that Moses did it wrong, but I know he learned and changed the plan. Here’s this story where the entire nation becomes riddled with fear because of a bad report. You have to understand—they think they are making a reasonable decision. Fear is almost always based on facts of some sort, just not truth.
If we see spiritual conflict and warfare as God does, let me insert here—I believe our awareness of spiritual conflict and warfare is going to increase without us becoming double-focused, and that’s essential for me. If we were to see spiritual conflict and warfare the way he sees it, we would realize that our meal—that which strengthens us—is in the fight.
Wow! Samson was attacked by a lion; the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he killed the lion. It says, and sometime later, he walked by the carcass of that dead lion, and there was honey in the carcass. His nourishment came from within the carcass of the enemy he defeated. Some people are lacking nourishment and strength simply because they’re running from their assignment. Their assignment is to bring defeat to these powers of darkness that are taunting the armies of the living God.
It’s a spiritual yes on our part that just says, «I will not back down from this.» I will not back down, and somehow that yes positions us to be nourished. Most people want to be nourished before the war; he says you get nourished in the war. So here we have Samson nourished from honey that was in the carcass of the lion he killed. The Lord put it this way in Psalms 23. David wrote, «There’s a banqueting table—a table set before me in the presence of my enemies.» So there’s a place of nourishment in the place of spiritual conflict.
Here it says these giants that are about to terrify this entire nation, keeping us out of our destiny, out of the will of God, out of the purpose of God for us as a nation—those giants will be food to us. Come on! We just have to say yes to what God is saying, and in the process of obeying the will of the Lord, taking the word of God and putting it on our lips, as Jesus declared over his own future, we take the word of the Lord and make that proclamation.
If we understood the power of God’s word, we would declare it more often. The power of God’s word! So here’s the situation where he says, «Listen, they are our bread. We’re going to be nourished in this conflict. By keeping ourselves from the conflict, we were born for, we actually keep ourselves from the strength we were designed for, from the nourishment, from the refreshing, from the nutrients we were designed to be strong in this season. But the strength only comes in the conflict.»
«Every place the sole of your foot treads, I have given to you» is the promise of God—to occupy every space we occupy. So, think about that. What does that look like for us to occupy whatever we occupy? That we are actually there representing him in character, in purity, in presence, in purpose—all these things permeate our lives so that the people around us benefit from the blessing of the goodness of God on our lives.
Something I haven’t said for a while, but I’ll say it again—it’s annoying and it’s just what I do. If you don’t want more, then you’re just being selfish. But if we can live in an environment where there’s so much need and not ache to be a part of the solution, then we’re way too caught up with our own agendas.
There’s this requirement, I believe, of the Lord to have a godly appetite for him to use us in ways that are significant and life-changing. One last comment I’ll make—actually, I’ll wait. Let’s go to Deuteronomy chapter 8. I’ll wait on that comment. Deuteronomy chapter 8. What we’re going to do today is, last week I talked to you about the presence, but I also talked about the devastating influence of complaining and criticism.
I know you didn’t need to hear it, but many of your relatives you just shared Christmas with needed to hear that word, and I was just trying to help you. That’s all. Just trying to help you. Complaining and criticism is how fear talks. Wow! Complaining and criticism do not coexist with a thankful heart. Thankfulness is what protects us from entitlement.
All of us, I mean, entitlement is almost the name of the game these days in culture—frighteningly so. We all hate entitlement in other people and are sometimes just way too slow to recognize it in ourselves. It’s that we constantly feel we are owed something, and when it doesn’t work, that’s when the complaining, the anger, the resentment, the pointing, the blaming, that sort of thing comes.
It’s become such a stronghold in our culture that people like you, people like me have to rise up with an aggressive posture of thankfulness. Wow! Aggressive! This morning, Steve mentioned it as a weapon—an aggressive posture of thankfulness. When the Scripture says, «Rejoice,» or «In everything give thanks,» he was giving us the tools to live unaffected by a movement that is becoming so deeply entrenched and rooted in our American culture right now. Thankfulness actually insulates us from the influence of that spirit and helps us to defeat entitlement and really change the language of our life.
The language of our life, when it is complaining and criticizing—those kinds of things, always pointing the finger, finding blame—those are so devastating because what it is is giving permission for unbelief to thrive. Yes, Bill, that was a really good point. When I complain and criticize and point the finger, I am actually fanning the flame of unbelief, giving it permission to increase because faith, real biblical faith and complaining do not coexist—they just don’t!
If, let’s say you knew someone—a very, very wealthy, very kind person—you knew them well enough to know that if they said something, you could take it to the bank—they are absolutely 100% honest and truthful. If they were to come to you this morning and say, «I had a dream of you last night. Come to my office this Friday; I’m going to give you $100,000,» how many of you would wait until Friday to rejoice? No, you wouldn’t! You’d be rejoicing right now! Why? Because you know it’s as good as done.
When the Lord says, «I cause all things to work together for good,» the one who’s not even capable of lying has just given a promise to turn a bad thing into a good thing. When does the rejoicing start? If there’s faith, legitimate faith, then it starts the moment you hear it, really!
All right, well, let’s just take a look at a couple of verses in Deuteronomy 8. You there? Verse 2: «You shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep the commandments or not. He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.»
All right, stop right there. When you’re in a position of need—when you’re in a position of lack or you’re just praying for that breakthrough—it could be personal, could be for your business, could be for your family—whatever that place of need is supposed to lead you to a confidence, that we live by what he says.
I don’t know if you’re connecting the dots here; he said, «I let you be hungry and I gave you manna.» What was the lesson? You live by what he says. How’s that represented in the manna? Are you getting my point? He didn’t say, «I let you be hungry and fed you with manna so you’d have confidence in manna.» The place of need is to take us to the person who speaks.
Why is that important? He spoke the worlds into being. When he talks, he creates. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Even faith itself is imparted through hearing. When Jack Taylor was alive, he came here a few times to minister. One of the times that impacted me so deeply, he quoted this passage from Luke chapter one, and I share it with you often. So, this isn’t new for most of you: «Nothing shall be impossible with God.»
That’s what the angel told Mary at the news that she would be giving birth to the Christ. «Nothing will be impossible with God.» Jack did an amazing job breaking down the original language of how this verse could be translated. The word «nothing» is actually two words; it’s the words «no» and «rama.» Rama often in Scripture refers to that freshly spoken word of God—the active word that God speaks into somebody’s life. Then it says, «shall not be impossible.»
That word «impossible» means «without ability.» So, this is what he said: «This verse could actually be translated like this: no freshly spoken word of God will ever come to you that does not contain its own ability to perform itself.» Good! Is that amazing?
No freshly spoken word of God will ever come to you that does not contain its own ability to perform itself. You take a kernel of corn; the ability to produce corn is in the seed. It needs soil, it needs water, it needs sunlight, but the ability to produce corn is in the seed. The ability to produce Christ-like in you is in the seed called the word that he speaks. James chapter 1 says, «In humility, that’s the condition of soil—the condition of the heart—receive the word implanted, which is able to save your soul.»
Receive the word implanted, the seed implanted. Why? Because that word has the ability, the word has the ability to save your soul! Salvation of spirit, soul, and body; the transformation of an individual life; the healing of the body; the saving, the forgiveness that we experience; the transformation of the mind; the emotional healing—the very things that all of us need. All of us are broken somewhere, and we are constantly being restored and refreshed and healed. But he does it by speaking to us.
The test of the hour is to hear him and to receive what he says. The transformation of our lives does not come because we have determined to be transformed; it comes because we have yielded to the transforming word. Part of what happens in this lesson is, to be honest, I wish we could take like 12 weeks to go through this, but this is it today.
There is so much responsibility that you and I have to yield to what he’s saying and doing so that he can do something in us that only he can get the credit for. Sometimes we miss our chance to see breakthroughs because we don’t pray with the prophecy; we don’t pray with the promise. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that everything is supposed to happen while we stand in silence.
It’s the great—not conflict, it’s the great paradox of the Christian life. There are some moments where the Lord says, «Stand still, see the salvation of the Lord, which I will accomplish for you today. Your role is to do nothing but observe.» When he does that, he’s simply revealing our place in him. He’s revealing our identity as sons and daughters of God; these are moments of unveiled inheritance. But there are other moments where he declares a matter, but it won’t happen unless there’s cooperation, partnership, prayer, and radical obedience.
Something is genuinely required to see a breakthrough happen. Larry Randolph made a statement years ago that helped me out a lot; he said, «While God will always fulfill all of his promises, he’s not obligated to fulfill your potential.» Sometimes the Lord gives us a word that is actually connected to who he’s making us to be, and here’s the implication: he will not release over me any promise that is premature because the weight of the blessing would work contrary to what he intended.
We see it all the time in the natural. We see people who win the lottery, perhaps someone who gets a ginormous contract for their athletic skills, and they get an enormous amount of money. How many times do we see these people actually end up in poverty after they’ve had everything the world could ever want? It’s because they weren’t as big in here as they were out here. Their internal world, their prosperity of soul, did not keep up with their external blessing.
So what the Lord does so well as a father is he’s constantly measuring us to see what we can carry, what we can handle responsibly. He wants to put the weight of blessing on an established life because that strengthens the established life. But in a fractured life, it actually increases the fracture. If you can get that metaphor, the weightiness of blessing actually increases the size of brokenness in a broken life.
So the Lord measures us sometimes by the way we pray. Probably everybody in the room has prayed out of fear, out of anxiety, out of stress. You know what? He’s such a wonderful father; he just receives us any way we come. If you’re in a mess, come in a mess. Just don’t leave in a mess. You know, when you get into the presence—it’s no sense driving through a car wash and not having your car washed. Don’t leave the way you drove it in; leave better off than the way you got in there.
If you come with fear and anxiety, all that junk, I get it; I have done that so many times. It’s not a problem. But prayers out of anxiousness are not prayers of authority; they are prayers of a servant, not a son. Prayers of a daughter and a son are prayers out of identity; they’re confident in who they are, but even more confident in who he is.
Anxiety will sometimes drive us to the Lord, but for me, I have found the absolute key for my life is when I come in out of fear, anxiety, stress—all this stuff—I get into that time of talking with the Lord, praying about things. There are a lot of things worth doing: the worship, the thankfulness, the reading of prophecy, Scripture—all of that. But let’s just take the prayer time. I come into the presence of the Lord; I don’t want to leave the same way I came in. If I did, then I wasn’t praying; I was complaining.
If you leave in the same condition you went in, then you didn’t go to have an impact; you went in to vent your frustrations. When we come before the Lord, it’s supposed to be the moments of encounter that bring about personal transformation. That’s where we are changed.
My favorite illustration of this is he says, «Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden. I will give you rest.» What is the deal? It’s a deal of exchange. «Come to me, you who are carrying junk, and I will give you rest.» In other words, you give me your junk, I’ll give you my rest. Let’s make an exchange!
All prayer is supposed to be an exchange. How do you know when you’ve prayed? You started in fear; you started in worry, anxiety. Maybe you started in complacency—you’re only praying because you know you’re supposed to. How do you know when you’ve come into a place of faith? You know because thankfulness for the answer is effortless.
Wow! There’s already thankfulness—I can see the answer; I can tell the answer has been released. I don’t see it yet; I don’t have the check in my hand; I don’t have the healing of the relationship. I don’t have anything external; nothing has changed. But what I’ve seen is in my heart of hearts, I feel such confidence in the presence that I know I can just thank him right now for the answer, even before it’s coming.
So you always want to pray in places of faith because what happens is in that place of faith, decrees are made, requests are made, decisions that are made out of authority, not out of pity, trying to get attention.
I don’t think there’s a better illustration of the Christian life, growing in the Christian life, living in the kingdom of God than Israel entering the promised land. To me, it is the most graphic thing you could put on a chart, and you could watch your Christian life develop and evolve through that chart of watching Israel enter the promised land. If you could picture this—they leave Egypt, which we know is symbolic of sin. The blood was shed and put on the doorposts.
When the blood is shed over our life, we leave sin and come into a time where the dealings of God get us ready to inherit promises. The promised land is just that—it’s a land of fulfillment, and that’s on the other side of every conflict. On the other side of every problem is promised land. That’s why you have the reasonable ability to rejoice before you get the answer, because when you’re in the middle of a conflict by design, promised land’s on the other side.
Wow! That was a better point than your response, but sorry. You go through difficulty; promised land awaits. So Israel, the Lord looks, shows them the promised land—this entire territory they’re going to inherit as a nation—and he says, «It’s all yours. All of it! Everything you can see belongs to you.» He says, «Now, good news, and there’s bad news. The good news is it’s all yours. The bad news is I’m going to give it to you little by little.»
But the reason he gave it to them little by little is that if he gave it to them all at once, he said the beasts would become too numerous and actually defeat them, which is a bizarre picture. They get everything all at once; they don’t have the population or the systems of economy or social justice or any of the things that are needed to maintain healthy environments, healthy communities. They don’t have any of that intact yet, and if he gives them all these cities all at once, the beasts of the field would become too numerous and would actually drive them out of their own inheritance.
Why? They don’t have the maturity to maintain the inheritance. That’s what the Lord is constantly working on in you and me—building that sense of maturity, that sense of our internal world is healthy and together so that he can trust us with influence in the external world.
That I become big in here so that no matter what he gives me out here, I can manage it for his glory; it doesn’t work against me; it works for me, and more specifically, for the purposes of the King and his kingdom. Amen? So he measures us.
The Lord promises this great promised land to Israel. Well, here’s the language used for inheriting the promised land: he says, «My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.» My lines—what is that? It’s land; it’s boundaries for land. They would go into the promised land, and Joshua had the responsibility of dividing all the land into sections for each tribe. Reuben would inherit one part, Ephraim and Manasseh, they’d all have different parts of inheritance, and he would draw the lines and say, «This—you get from this side of the river to the peak of that mountain; you get from this mountain to the other side of the valley,» and they’ve got these territories, and they’re written out as you would property lines.
Excuse me. And here he says, «My lines—talking about inheritance. My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.» In other words, «God, you gave me beachfront property! I got a lake, I got a river, I got a mountain; I got the whole deal! I got the best land on the face of the planet.» This he gave to me!
What’s his inheritance? He said, «You are my inheritance.» Look at the first verse again—verse five—he says, «O Lord, you are the portion of my inheritance and my cup.» This is bizarre because, again, this is referring back to an Old Testament reality. There are 12 tribes—11 tribes and then two half tribes. One was the tribe of Levi. Levi had a different inheritance than everyone else. Everyone else got these big pieces of land to grow crops, for their animals, to be involved in commerce.
It was to be involved in business so that they would have something to trade—not only between the tribes but with other nations as the Lord prospered them—they would be a resource for multiple nations. But Levi, the Lord gave them only enough land to keep them fed, not for produce, not for being involved in the world’s economy, enough for themselves.
Then he said, «Priest, you inherit me!» He says, «I’m your inheritance.» When he identifies this concept here, he’s identifying the fact that as we could put this in New Testament context, every New Testament believer is a priest unto the Lord, and the Lord is saying, «Your inheritance is me—you get me! There is no greater inheritance!»
And that’s why he could say, «God, I got you as my inheritance! My lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. I got the most significant inheritance in all of human history because I inherited God!» When you were born again, the Holy Spirit—your faith—you put faith in Christ by the grace of God—the Holy Spirit came and took up residence inside of you. Your physical body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, Paul says. When the Holy Spirit came to you and was given to you, he came as a down payment.
Wow! The Holy Spirit is a down payment. Now, if I go down and buy a car for $10,000 and I take $3,000 cash and I get a loan for the seven, what I’m saying is, «Here’s $3,000; I still owe you seven. I’m going to keep making payments until you’ve received the whole thing.»
When you were born again, God said, «Here is the Holy Spirit, and I will keep making payments until you have the whole thing.» He’s already declared that we are heirs of God. Now, I don’t think there is a concept in Scripture that is more mind-boggling than God giving himself to you and to me as an inheritance. There’s nothing that stretches the imagination more.
When the Lord gives us a promise, he actually goes into our future, he sees where he’s taking us, and he comes back to us with a word that will be necessary to get us there. It’s the reason Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18, «Take the prophecies that have been previously given to you and use them as weapons.»
Use them as weapons. Which tells me this: when God gives me a promise, it doesn’t mean it’s going to come quickly or easily. There’s going to be a conflict between now and the fulfillment. There are many believers who only know one half of Christian advancement; they only know the half of receiving from the Lord. But they don’t know the half of apprehending, taking, violently by force.
There are two ways of advancing in the kingdom: one is you receive as a child. It’s a submissive response; it’s in response to a good father who loves to bless and take care of us. I’ve stated it many times: what you need in life will be brought to you; most of what you want you’ll have to go get.
There is this indignation that rises up in the heart of people that realize, «I’ve been planted in the middle of a war, and I need to apprehend what I was born for.» It’s not going to come waltzing into my life. Thankfully, what we need to survive is brought to us, but what we were born for is on the other side of a fight.
Stewarding the promises of God, by memorizing promises, by immersing ourselves in what God has said. Joshua, chapter 1, verse 5-9, about not fearing, taking hold of what God has said, not turning to the right or the left, giving ourselves completely to the will of the Lord—the word of the Lord. That whole mandate in those passages is really one of the strongest dictates of my life for the last 50 years. It’s taking what God has said and declaring it, praying it, confessing it, singing it—doing whatever I need to do—writing it on cards, sticking it on the dashboard of my car, whatever I need to do to keep it in front of me so that I don’t lose track.
Because it’s easy to lose track of what God says is supposed to happen in my life, and then when it doesn’t happen like we think it should, then we just say, «Well, it’s the sovereignty of God.» I’d like to suggest that God’s about to upgrade our advancement in promises, but it’s going to be because of a surrender, a yielding, a dying—to self-will in embracing what God has declared over our life.
There’s something about the yes to the will of God that gives us a grace to fight and to fight well. All right, take a look at this passage in 2 Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 20: «For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him amen, to the glory of God through us.»
For all the promises of God in him are yes. The previous verse says, «This was first preached to you was not yes and no, but in him was yes.» What is that saying? When they came and they preached the gospel, let’s just say today we preach the gospel of the kingdom of God to everybody in this room. That gospel is not preached with yes and no; in other words, it’s not given to you as a maybe this will happen.
It is given as an absolute yes! This is God’s purpose; this is his determination; this is his commitment to you; this is his commitment to me. It’s an absolute yes, not a maybe. And then he goes on and says this promise is given to you is yes in Christ, and the amen is provided by us to the glory of God. Come on now—think!
Think about this: there are over 7,700 promises of God in the Bible. A friend of mine, Dick Mills, memorized every one of them in multiple translations just because he could. That’s a lot of promises to steward. Sometimes you’ll be reading Scripture, sometimes you’ll hear a testimony, sometimes a prophet will call you out. It could happen in so many different ways where a promise of the Lord just seems to have life to it. Something rises, an excitement of faith, and something is activated in your heart when you see this promise of the Lord.
What we do with that moment oftentimes determines what we end up with. The Scripture says in Hebrews 4 that Israel didn’t enter into the rest of God, didn’t enter into the promise of God—listen carefully—because they did not join the word they heard with faith. They didn’t hear the word of the Lord and join it with faith; they heard the word of the Lord and they joined it with fear and said no. There are giants in the land.
They took the word of the Lord and they said, «No, wait a minute; that can’t be possible that it’s God’s will for our life because look at our condition! Look what’s going on! There’s no way in the world we could defeat that kind of enemy.» Oftentimes fear becomes our teacher, and we actually take comfort in fear because it keeps us from the risk that intimidates and scares us.
So here he says the promise of God is, in him, is yes, and in him, the amen is given through us to the glory of God. What’s the point? God declares a promise, but he’s waiting for human agreement. Now, you have to get this: God can do everything on his own by himself better than all of us combined! That’s not what he’s looking for; he designed for his will to be done through human agreement.
I’m not saying we control God; I’m not saying that he is somehow answerable to us in any way. I’m just saying it is his heart from the very beginning. He created Adam and Eve, put them in a garden, and said, «Be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth.» He brought them into a place of co-laboring with him so that his will, his purposes could be done on an entire planet.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he came with the keys of authority and he gave them to his disciples, and he said, «Now accomplish what I assigned you to do. Disciple the nations.» It’s time to recover a planet! What is the will of God? «On earth as it is in heaven.» What is the will of God? «I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.» He didn’t say a token representation of every tribe.
What is the will of God? «The glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the water covers the sea.» See, the design and plan of the Lord is so much grander than every one of us could possibly imagine. And, as the Body of Christ, we have much greater faith in the return of the Lord than we do in the power of the gospel.
If our faith were in the power of the gospel, we wouldn’t expect Jesus to return to rescue us; it would be the crowning touch on a victorious church. Come on! The gospel is enough to transform an individual life; therefore, it’s enough to transform a family; therefore, it’s enough to transform a city; therefore, it’s enough to transform a nation!
The point is the power of the gospel is enough! He’s not coming back to die again to upgrade what is possible in our lifetime. The cross is enough! Yes! And that is the promise of God for us—to live a fulfilled life. It’s not a fulfilled life in the sense of boats and planes and mansions; I’m not talking about that.
I’m talking about what we were born for. The promised land is actually a representation of us stepping fully into what we were born for—why we’re alive! Did you know we were designed to work? But work wasn’t supposed to come out of stress. We were designed to create. We were designed to be productive. Everything about this journey of God for the people of God was he was bringing them into a place of productivity, of fruitfulness, of increase—that their labor would be breathed on by God and would have an effect literally on surrounding nations.
Israel traveled through a wilderness; they come into a promised land where they had to plant crops. In the wilderness, manna just appeared on the ground. God takes us through seasons of absolute trust where we have nothing so that he can trust us with something. The measure of what he can trust to us is determined by our level of trust in him. In other words, as I have grown in my trust and dependency on him, I am expanded in what he is able to entrust to me.
This life of entering a promised land is not a prophetic picture of going to heaven; it’s a picture of living a kingdom lifestyle on this earth in this body, as humans limited and restricted, living the kingdom lifestyle that Jesus modeled for us. Jesus is the promised one; we know that. But he showed us our inheritance. Everything that he did, he modeled for us to show us what was available for everyone who was in Christ.
He illustrated the inheritance. He illustrated—he is the person called the promised land. When you have a neighbor who lives under torment and you are so burdened and concerned for them, and you see the mental anguish that they live under, and you set your heart to seek the Lord for an anointing to see breakthrough, and you fast and you pray and you cry out to God, you read the Scriptures, you study, you pray, you meditate—you pray specifically for that neighbor. Over time, you have the opportunity to pray for them, and you watch God heal and bring them into a sound mind. Guess what? You just received your inheritance!
The anointing to set captives free is part of your inheritance. It must be pursued. It doesn’t always get brought to you and laid in your lap. Thankfully, there are some things that come that way, but a lot of what we ache for has to be pursued.