Tag: Promised Land

Prayer for Israel, Part 2

On By vickleaIn prayer, Scripture1 Comment

Yesterday, my prayer was focused on Israel’s physical enemy. Today, my prayer will center on their spiritual well-being. It is not a new truth that the people of Israel need to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and most have not accepted Him as their Messiah. So, let us pray together for their salvation, that many will come to know the Lord even through this great suffering in their land.

I pray that they will see the need for Jesus and confess their belief in Him and His resurrection. That is the only way to salvation. The Israelites know much about the Old Testament and the Law. I pray for God to open their hearts to the truths of the New Testament and all of the prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

May these blessed and chosen people of God believe with their hearts and be justified, professing their faith in the Lord aloud and rejoicing in the salvation that comes with their belief in the only One who can truly save them. Jesus is the Passover Lamb, the final and ultimate sacrifice. May the Lord open their eyes and hearts to see and believe.

It is only by grace that any of us has been saved. It is a gift, and no amount of following God’s laws can save us. Only God’s grace and our faith in Him can lead to salvation. May the eyes of the Jewish people be opened and their ears attentive to God crying out to them to turn to Him.

No one…not one person can be saved without believing in Jesus. My prayer is for the Jewish people, especially those in Israel, to see their need for a Savior and the truth that the Messiah has come and will come again.

None of us is better than another. God desires to save both Gentiles and Jews. My emphasis today is on the Jewish people who have suffered so much for so long, in the darkness and without hope. May the Lord bring them into the knowledge of His Son as their Savior and into the light of His presence where there is hope and life everlasting.

It is fitting to end my prayer back in Exodus where I began yesterday. I pray that God will use His unfailing love to lead His people and to guide them to the real promised land, eternal life with Him.

In Jesus’s Name. Amen.

The Spies Sent Out by Moses

On By vickleaIn Scripture3 Comments

By the time you get to Numbers 13 in your study of the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness, you should understand that the hearts of many of the people were still set on selfishness instead of on the Lord. God had saved them from slavery in Egypt, given them food to eat, kept them safe and still they whined and complained. So it is no surprise that when the representatives from each tribe were sent to do reconnaissance and bring back a report of what Canaan was like, most of the spies were negative and reported that there was no way that the Israelites could be victorious. Yes, the land was good and the food there was plentiful, but the enemy were giants. Thus, they were reluctant to go forward. Only Caleb from the tribe of Judah and Joshua from the tribe of Ephraim encouraged the people to continue forward, as lead by the Lord.

Caleb’s positive attitude did not come because he was confident in his own ability or in the ability of the warriors with Israel. Rather, he was confident in the might of the Lord. His certainty was strongly rooted in his faith in God. I want to be a Caleb in a land of naysayers who all want to stay right where they are, comfortably ensconced in a wilderness while God provides food, shelter, and clothing that never wears out. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? Of course, there is something wrong with that! The Israelites did not wander for forty years in the wilderness just to be content staying there! They were sent to occupy the Promised Land and it was ready for them to march in and take, but because of the unbelief and reluctance of some of the leaders, they had to stay in the wilderness for more years. Of those leaders, only Caleb and Joshua got to go into Canaan.

Sometimes life seems like a wilderness journey, but we get comfortable with those circumstances and although we don’t like them too well, we don’t want change to happen because we don’t know what the outcome of the change will be. Either we trust God to take us out of the wilderness into the new place that He has promised us or we don’t. Either we are a Caleb who sees God taking care of things for us or we stay where we are, moaning over the circumstances but reluctant to try to change them. Again, I want to be a Caleb. I don’t want to be stuck in the wilderness, moaning and whining and refusing to move forward. I don’t want God to leave me there because of my unbelief. Sometimes I have to take the time to pray for help with my unbelief and a new infusion of faith. Keeping records of past answers to prayer helps restore me and get me ready to move on. Do you want to move on with God or stay comfortably where you are, even though that is not God’s best for you? I know what my choice is and I hope that you are aware of the repercussions to making the wrong choice.

May the Lord bless you with the desire to want to be a Caleb in the middle of the wilderness of life and grant you the courage to move forward with Him. Not ahead of Him, not behind Him, but with Him as your guide into His very best for you!

Possess What God Has Given You

On By vickleaIn Scripture3 Comments

www.bible.com/1171/jos.18.3.mev

I am doing devotionals daily and as I read, I am keeping my eyes open for God’s promises. They are so numerous that I cannot begin to name them all, but finding this Scripture reminded me that reading God’s promises is not enough. I have to actually claim them. They are already mine. And, guess what? They are yours, too! How often have I sat and whined that things are not happening the way I want them to and then God shows me that He is indeed moving. What I have discovered in my journey with God is that sometimes He wants me to step out into the promise, believing that it is mine. Now, I am not a proponent of “fake it until you make it” or “Claim it” no matter how selfish the desire you have in your heart is.

God’s promises have to do with establishing His kingdom in your heart and in the world. For example, Psalm 84:11 says: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.” What “good thing” is this talking about? Riches, a huge mansion, a luxurious car? No! Of course not! Good things are God’s grace and mercy and salvation. He has already provided these good things for us. We just have to know that it is promised and walk with that promise in our hearts.

Can I see God’s Heaven here on earth? Not really. But I know that I know that the Promised Land exists for me, just as it did for the Israelites. I may face many enemies here on earth, most of them in my own heart waging battle against sin. But I have to step into the knowledge that each day I face, each step I take to advance God’s kingdom brings me closer to the Promised Land, the land in which I will spend eternity with Him. I can sometimes imagine God just looking at earth and its inhabitants and shaking his head in disbelief at how stubborn we get sometimes. He tells us to do something that will lead to the fulfillment of a promise and instead we hesitate and want all kinds of confirmation and assurances before we move forward. God’s promises are “Yes! Amen” and “Go for it!” But they are not meant to fulfill selfish desires, but to establish His kingdom.

May you be blessed by a promise today from the Lord that you find as you read and study His Word. Hold it in your heart and stop forward in belief that it will be fulfilled because God does not lie, ever.

God’s Specific Directions

On By vickleaIn Scripture9 Comments

Have you ever wondered what would happen in your life if you heard God clearly and followed His directions exactly? Moses spoke to God and God spoke to Moses. Yet, Moses and his brother Aaron sinned and did not follow exactly what God told them to do.

Notice the very important word in this passage is speak.
Moses did not speak to the rock; he struck it. He did not follow God’s instructions which had been very specific.
Consequences follow actions.

Shortly after this passage, Aaron died. Later, Moses got to go to the top of a mountain and look and see the Promised Land, but he was never allowed to enter it. “Unfair!” I can hear the outcry already. What in the world was God thinking that He did not allow Moses and Aaron,who had faithfully led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the desert, to enter the Promised Land, their destination the whole time?

Well, my answer is that God was thinking that He is holy and what He asks for specifically is for a specific reason and He expects complete obedience, not a partial, half-hearted, “I’ll do it my way” kind of obedience. One of the big problems in our world today is that so many people are trying to do things their way, the way that their minds came up with, and not the way that God has said it should be.

For example, the Bible tells us that God made male and female. Now, there are people in our world who say that one can decide their gender. Really? Is that what the Holy Bible says? The Bible says that man and woman marry and become one flesh. Man today, in all of his own wisdom, has decided that homosexuality and the resulting relationships are okay. Hmm. I’m sure that is NOT what God thinks is best for our world considering He destroyed Sodom for such sin. Nevertheless, men think that they know better than God and go their own way. Like Moses, they are headed in a direction that will not allow them to go into the Promised Land.

In the time of Moses, the Promised Land was an actual, physical place. Today, the Promised Land is Heaven, that place in which we have eternal life and live in the presence of God forever. People who think that they can “do their own thing” all of their lives and then live in the presence of a Holy God are just fooling themselves. God does not respect some people more than others, and if Moses, a great leader of the Israelites, could be denied entrance into the physical Promised Land, who are we to think that we can do whatever we want and still go into the Heavenly Promised Land? How presumptuous is that!

In my opinion, the big thing that we are missing in the picture of sin and choices is TRUST. We don’t trust that God will fulfill His Word, every jot and tittle of it. I trust that God loves and shows mercy and forgives. But I also trust that He is the righteous Judge who will one day hold all men into account for their own choices and actions. Once again, remember that Moses and Aaron were not allowed to go into the Promised Land. They changed one word of what God told them to do and that made all the difference.

God says what He means and means what He says.

I hope that you have a blessed day and that you feel God’s presence leading and directing you in the way you should go.