establishing the Kingdom

We think of grace as “unmerited favor” from God. Today the Lord brought to my mind the miracles He did in the Wilderness for His wandering people, the Hebrews. Then He said “This was their time of grace.” The children of Israel wandered for 40 years and their shoes didn’t wear out. God brought them food from heaven, manna. And they drank water from a rock, twice. He not only promised them a land of their own, but He was with them during their wandering after their rebellion, caring for their needs. God gave them grace.

The Hebrews had lessons to learn in the wilderness. They needed to learn to walk in faith, trusting and obeying God. In coming out of Egypt, they needed to let go of those things that they liked about Egypt. God was not only teaching the Hebrews to become His people, but He was also putting fear of His name amongst the nations surrounding the Promise Land. Because of His mighty works during the exodus from Egypt, God’s miracles made Him known everywhere the Hebrews went. He protected them as His own while they were in the Wilderness.

Next, the Lord said that the Promise Land was a picture of God’s Kingdom, and we Christians enter it by overcoming God’s enemies. We must do warfare against enemies we do not see, such as sickness, slander, and poverty, to name a few. In the Kingdom of God we seek out the boundaries of our inheritance and establish His righteousness there. We stand on God’s personal word to us and overcome our enemies by faith in that word and by persevering in our faith. We learn discernment so that we can discover the enemy spies of falsehood and lies. And we test our building materials so that our works may stand. Each overcoming brings authority over our enemy, and little-by-little we push him back, out of our territory.

What the Lord said next surprised me. “Sometimes Christians want to continue their Wilderness relationship with Me. They want the Kingdom but they want Me to fight their battles for them.” I understood that, though the Lord teaches us to be dependent on Him, dependency can become crippling if we don’t learn to accept responsibility. If we want the Lord to hand the Kingdom to us we do not grow in the responsibility that comes by putting our heart and effort into winning it. The Lord takes us through a period of grace wherein we get to know Him, and the world gets to see that we are His. But there comes a time when our enemies need to see God’s authority in us, and that time is when we are entering into the promises of God for our lives.

In Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 there is a warning quoted three times; “Today, when you hear His voice do not harden your hearts as they did in the wilderness . . .“ The first generation of Hebrews were seen as rebellious and unbelieving because they lacked the willingness to go into the Promise Land and fight their enemies. They didn’t think they could win. Yet this warning comes to Christians also. Do we have faith to win against our enemies, or are we unwilling to try? Our enemy already fears God. He knows Jesus’ name and obeys Him. Does our enemy know our name, and will he submit to our authority in Christ?

The first generation of Hebrews were sad about wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, never to enter the Promise Land. We are sad also when we wait for the promises of God to be fulfilled in our lives. We try to improve our walk with Christ, and be busy doing things for Him as well as others. It’s as if we believe that we have to be good enough to enter the promises of God. But the truth is, we have to be obedient enough. The Hebrews did not fail to enter the Promised Land because they were a weak, whiney bunch of people; they failed because they hardened their heart and did not obey the voice of God.

The Christian walk of self-improvement, much like wandering, is unsatisfactory. We have moments of reflection where we say, “I just wish I knew what God wanted me to do!” Based on what the Lord has been saying tonight, I believe that He wants us to walk in His promises. He wants us to establish His Kingdom in our hearts and in our lives. And, He will help us once we begin to fight against the wrongful inhabitants of our lives. But we need to go from grace, where God does mighty acts independently from us, to faith, where God does mighty acts through us. Our thinking needs to change from one of expecting God to fight our battles for us, to one of walking in faith as the Lord fights our battles with us. When we understand that God’s purposes are to make us strong and victorious we will leave behind our unsatisfying attempts at self-improvement and take the Kingdom by force.