Mensa Otabil - Possess the Land
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This is day number 23 of our 40 days of path. Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 8: «See, I have set the land before you. Go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them and their descendants after them.»
When God called Abraham, one of the things He told him was that He was going to give him land, children, and land. His descendants would be numerous, and then He' d give them land. He actually told him the land that was his. But Abraham never inherited the land. The land then became a promise. And so Abraham told his children, «This is the promise.» He told Isaac, and Isaac told Jacob. Israel always knew that there was land that was for them. Then they went into Egypt for 430 years. God set them free to go to that land that had been promised to them hundreds of years earlier.
The promises of God do not diminish with time and space. No matter where you are or what time it is, what God says will come to pass. So in order to take new territories for God, there are a few things we must look at. First is the promise. What God says, if God says it, it is settled. But what God says must also be believed. We must believe what God says. God made a promise to Abraham; Abraham believed it. After God has spoken and we have believed, the land will not be ours. The promise will not be ours because there is a process we must go through for the promise to become our inheritance. That process has many activities. For Israel, it meant walking through the land.
God says, «Every place that the soles of your feet will tread, that is yours.» Even when they got to the promised land, they had to go around the wall of Jericho, going around the land, walking the land. That means taking steps, moving through the promise, and making an effort to reach the promised land. And that is not all. They had to fight for the promise. The fact that God has given you a promise doesn’t mean it’s going to drop into your lap or that people are going to applaud you and say, «Hey, God promised you; take it.» No. People will fight you for what is rightfully yours. People will resist you; they will try to take it from you. Israel had to learn to fight for the promised land. It was theirs by God’s promise, but it had to be theirs by occupation. They had to fight for it.
So, the promise of God, the process, and the third is the possession. The possession means you have to take it. You have to take hold of the land. For Israel, they took hold of the land bit by bit, piece by piece. After they had taken the land, they had to learn to hold on to it. They held on to it for a while. Eventually, they lost the land because they went back into captivity in Babylon, and after many years, they returned to the promised land, which their descendants are occupying now. So, you take it, but you must hold it. God promises you must go through the process, and then you have to possess it. But after you possess it, it doesn’t mean it will stay with you forever. You have to learn to hold on to it. Every step of inheriting a promise from God requires effort, requires work, and requires tenacity.
Let’s share a word of prayer together. Say with me, «Heavenly Father, you have set a great inheritance before me. Help me to possess all your promises to me, in Jesus' name. Amen.»