Do you believe that the secret to the "good life" is hard work? That in order to have the best life has to offer you have to first pay your dues?
There is a popular idea running around that we all have to go through a lot of bad things before we can experience the good things. And there seems to be a lot of evidence to support it. Just listen to people who have come through hard times and are now enjoying a better life. They will all tell you the story of the pain and suffering that they endured, and the sacrifices they made, on the long road to their prosperity. Some of them seem to wear their painful past like a badge of honor that says, "I earned my success."
The blessings of God are all about His promises and grace and are not about how hard we have worked, how much we've sacrificed, and how much pain we've endured in order to earn them. The bottom line is that we cannot earn God's grace. And since everything we have in life comes to us because His grace, it is all a gift.
In Deuteronomy 6:10-12 God speaks to the Children of Israel and says, "When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you - a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant - then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery."
God promised to bring them into abundance and prosperity that they would not have to work for. It was simply going to be given to them because He had promised to do it. Were there going to be battles? Sure. The nations that occupied the land were not simply going to hand it to them; they were going to have to fight to get it. The spies had told them that there were fortified cities, strongholds, and giants in the land.
When they heard about the problems, they completely forgot about the God who had delivered them from Egypt. And not only had He rescued them from slavery, the Egyptians had given them great wealth in gold and silver. They had seen the power of God revealed in His judgments on Egypt and the blessings that He had for them in all that they had received. But as they stood there, hearing that the people of the land were powerful and that their cities were strong, all of that was forgotten.
Rather than rejoicing at the promise of the blessing, all the people were crying and complaining that God had simply brought them there to kill them. They stopped looking at and thinking about God, and focused solely on what they thought they could handle. But one of the spies, Caleb, tried to encourage the people and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." (Numbers 13:30)
It's the same when we start to pursue our dreams. Whether that dream is to build a business of your own, go into the ministry, or finally write that book you've been talking about, the promise of God is that He will be with us every step of the way. That doesn't mean that we won't have problems, but it does mean that we can count on His help to overcome them. We need to learn to have the same kind of faith that Caleb had and continue to believe that our dreams are possible even when the problems seem insurmountable.
And God's promises affect every area of our lives and not just our jobs or businesses. Whether it's our careers or finances, our marriages or all of our relationships, God wants us to enjoy His blessings, promises, and abundance in all of them. We need to be careful that we don't make the mistake of believing that we can't have it all, because that is exactly what God wants to give us. We will never be truly abundant, never really enter the Promised Land that God has for us, unless we are experiencing His goodness in every part of our lives.
I know that there are a lot of times in my life when I feel like the Children of Israel. I start off pretty well, and it seems like God is on my side as I take steps towards my dreams, but then problems come up. And the more I look at the problems, the more I begin to wonder if God really has just led me out in the "wilderness" to kill me. Things are not working out as I had hoped in the beginning, and in some cases they can start looking pretty bleak and discouraging.
At times like that we all need to keep our minds focused on God's power and not our problems. Michael Beckwith, who some may know from the movie "The Secret", says, "Don't take your big problems to God, take a big God to your problems." When our minds are racing and we're freaking out because we can't see how God is going to "fix" things for us, we need to be like Caleb. We need to focus on God's promises and His grace and not our own strength.
We will be able to go in and take possession of God's promises, but it won't be because we're so tough and we have all the answers. Instead it will be because God is the Almighty. Even when we can't see how it could possibly work out, God has an answer and He knows the way. For example, when it feels like our prayers have not been answered, God is still faithful and we should not lose heart and let our fears control our decisions. If we can remain calm and wait on Him, He will give us the answers we need.
Another problem is that it can be too easy to believe that we can never really enjoy God's blessing because we haven't worked hard enough for them. We have the belief that the only way to experience His goodness is if we strive and make sacrifices. The giants that we face are not just the inevitable problems that will come our way, the negative criticisms from other people who don't think we can succeed. The biggest problems we will face are the internal battles that we will have with our own doubts and fears.
It's one thing when people around us tell us that we're not good enough, but it's a whole other matter when we begin to question ourselves. Our doubts about God's love and whether or not we deserve it will cause us to think that it's all about our works and not our faith. What faith we have will falter and eventually fail as long as we believe that it's up to us to be perfect. If we think that God can't love us until we've reached some particular point in our spiritual lives, we will always find reasons why He won't give us His blessings.
2 Corinthians 10:4-5 says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
God has given us powerful weapons that we can use to overcome the negative, doubtful thoughts that try to rob us of the good that God has for us. John 10:10 says, "The thief (the devil) comes only to steal and kill and destroy." The way that he usually does that is by telling us lies. When Jesus talked about the devil He said, "When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44)
The promises of God are available to us, but in order to take possession of them we will have to start believing the truth. We have to believe that God's blessings are available to us not because we work hard and earn them, but simply because He wants to give us good things in our lives. We also have to stop thinking that we have to pay our dues, that there is a certain amount of pain and suffering that we have to go through in order to deserve His goodness.
We will face battles as we take steps toward our dreams. But most of them will be the ones that we face with our own thoughts and beliefs. It's not that God is making things hard for us, it's that we make them hard on ourselves. Because we think that we have to suffer, we end up creating more pain in our lives.
We have been brainwashed to a certain degree by the movies and stories that we watch and read. If you've read, or seen the movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's books, "The Lord of the Rings," you have seen what is called the "hero's journey." The basic plot is that we have an unlikely hero, someone who is going to take on evil, and this person then goes through a series of bad events that just seem to get worse and worse as the story evolves. In the end, our reluctant hero barely survives some final threat to overcome evil by the skin of his teeth. Evil is finally defeated, but only after much suffering and pain.
If we read stories like that, or watch the movies based on them, we can begin to believe that success and blessings only come after a long arduous journey in which we suffer, going from bad to worse, until we finally snatch victory from the very jaws of defeat. And while all of that sounds very romantic, and creates great drama for those that like those stories (and I do like them), in our own lives it can lead to unnecessary pain.
The Children of Israel were going to have to overcome the nations that occupied the land, but God was going to be with them every step of the way. He was going to give them the wisdom and the ability to defeat nations that were larger and stronger than they were. The battle belonged to God and He was going to give them the victory.
As we move forward on our dreams and begin to take possession of God's promises and blessings, we will face opposition. There will be internal struggles in which we will have to face the lies that we have come to believe and overcome them. But the good news is that God is on our side. He wants us to win and He has given us all the weapons that we will need in order to win.
The hard part for us isn't that we have to face the battles, it's that we need to learn to trust God when it looks like we can't win. Whenever we face external problems, we will also have to deal with the internal struggles and thoughts that we have. The external battles will be won as we trust in God's power and might to give us the solutions we need, and to provide the means by which we can overcome the problems.
One of the most important parts of the armor described in Ephesians 6 is the shield of faith. We use our faith to extinguish the fiery darts, the lies, doubts, and fears that the devil throws at us. If we don't use our shields to protect us, we will find that the darts will get through to the other parts of our armor.
The devil will go through all of our armor looking for weaknesses. He starts, as Paul does in his list, with the belt of truth (Ephesians 6:14). Just as he did in the Garden of Eden, the devil will question the truth of what God said. In order to win the battle at this point, we don't have to know a lot of scripture, but we do need to know a few promises that God has given us so that we will be able to beat back the lies that our enemy, the devil, throws at us.
The next thing the devil will attack is the breastplate of righteousness. He will whisper lies in our ears that tell us we have to earn God's favor and love. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, the religion trap. If we look at all of the religions in the world they all have one thing in common, you have to work to earn God's favor. Christianity is different because we teach that we can never earn God's love, instead He gives it to us for free when we accept that Christ died for us. We will never be righteous on our own, but because of our faith in Christ, we have been given God's righteousness. Because it's given to us, we don't have to earn it and the righteousness that we have is perfect already.
He will also attack the helmet of our salvation with lies and questions about God's ability to save us. We will find ourselves having to take control of our thoughts and not allowing them to run, and ruin our lives. The more we entertain the questions about God's love for us, the harder it will be to enjoy His blessings. With the devil helping us, we will always be able to find something that we've done wrong, or failed to do right, and the condemnation will hinder our prayers.
When we look at the second chapter of Ephesians we see that we have been seated in the heavenly places with Christ. We have received His authority and His power is available to us through faith. There is nothing that can hinder us from going in and taking possession of the promises of God as long as we are willing to wage the battles in our minds. As we hold up our faith, and hold fast to the truth that God has done everything for us, we will start to experience His power and blessings in ways that we could never have imagined.
The Promised Land is there and available for all of us. There will be struggles and tribulations, but we can be encouraged because Jesus overcame. He will guide us and help us with His truth and power as long as we will trust in Him and not our own wisdom and strength. The blessings have all been prepared for us and God is ready to lead us into the promises, are we ready to go?
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