Our Mission - Part 1- Take Possession of the Promised Land

Michael writes this week that God is omniscience - all-knowing. Therefore, He knew in advance that we who believe were destined to be His sons ... His children according to the good pleasure of His will. Those who have received the Spirit of God can understand the ‘will of God’. However, the natural person (without the Spirit of God) does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Misunderstanding the will of God results from inability to understand the reality of the spiritual realms of light and darkness. God has called each Believer in Christ to be a leader in the spiritual battle.

In Joshua 13:6, the Lord said that there were large portions of the Promised Land that Israel had not rightfully taken. Many years earlier, Joshua and Caleb were the only two of twelve spies who had given a good report about Israel's ability to take over the land of Canaan. God had promised Israel that He would give Israel the land of Canaan, but ten of the twelve spies did not believe God's promise. They believed that the giants in the land and the armies of the unbelievers were bigger and more powerful than the power of God and the veracity of his promise. These ten died with the rest of this generation of the children of Israel. They perished, wandering in wilderness for forty years.  However God had spared Joshua and Caleb who were now growing old.  According to Joshua 16:10, when Israel finally entered the Promised Land, they did not dislodge the Canaanites ... they did not drive them out completely. Instead, contrary to the Word of God, Israel made the Canaanites their slaves. In Joshua 18:3, Joshua said to Israel, "How long will you wait before you take possession of the Promised Land?" In this day and time, God still asks this question of his children who have been born again.

Caleb's tribe of Judah endured. God always calls His people as missionaries on a mission: to endure and to drive out the spiritual darkness according to the light of the Word of Truth. This mission has not changed. Today, He has called us to reclaim our neighborhoods and communities, our culture and society for the truth of the Word of God. He has called us to be His Ambassadors; sent from above as Ambassadors to represent our heavenly kingdom in a foreign land, our heavenly homeland and eternal perspective; the land of our new birth is heaven. We have been born again from above and we are seated in heavenly places in Christ. We have been commissioned in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation to shine as lights because we are the light of the world. Since we are Ambassadors, our houses are embassies ...  outposts for heaven in a world of sinful darkness. As God said to Joshua before he took possession of the Promised Land, “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you” – Joshua 1:3. Therefore, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” – Joshua 1:9. In this foreign land, as God's Ambassadors, we have "diplomatic immunity." Yes, our homes are embassies, a piece of heaven in a foreign land. 

2 Corinthians 5:20-21 "Therefore, we are Ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

We shall continue Michael’s message on: Our Mission” tomorrow.

In Christ, Brian