Silly Points of Note

On Promises (2)

If there is no promise of God that does not come with a journey, we can build on that to say that there is no possession of that promise without a war. This is where the church in the wilderness missed it when they came to the borders of Jordan (the river).

It was a two-year journey from the point of crossing the Red Sea to get to Kadesh-barnea after branching at the Mount of God. The promise now lay before them and the next thing was for them to possess the land. However, they were not expecting to see giants, to them the promise was just too good to be true as they asserted that it would be virtually impossible for them to get rid of the Sons of Anak.

As we have established, every promise of God comes with a journey. One of the greatest promises of Christ was revealed to the disciples on the day of His Ascension. He told them to wait on Him for the promise of the Father i.e. the Holy Spirit. They did not have to wait long but the waiting period was still a journey. Where was the war in their “possession” of the gift of the Holy Ghost? The war was in the spiritual wait that had to go through in the place of prayer.

The “good” news is that from that point onwards, warfare in the Kingdom became more spiritual than physical and they were the first to show how to “tarry” so that they could possess the promise. The tarrying was both a journey and a battle to possess.

The church in the wilderness may not have been a church located in the wilderness if they had applied some degree of reasoning when the twelve came back with their reports. Ten of them came back with an evil report while just two returned with a positive report. Unfortunately, the two who were in the minority based their report on a sounder reasoning or logic.

While the other ten were talking about seeing the giants and being like grasshoppers in comparison, the other two were looking at their journey thus far, how God had brought them out from Egypt with signs and wonders and that indelible hand of God that had been with them all this while. They knew that it was not about what they could do with their strength, something the other ten and the rest of the nation had seemed to have forgotten. It was God that had brought them thus far, but they were looking at it as if the strength and responsibility to possess the promise was not going to come from the God who gave them the promise.

When they saw the giants, they recognized war but the war they were looking at was something they would have to wage on their own. They failed to see that it was God that had been fighting on their behalf all this while even when He gave them the promise of freedom from the enslaving grip of Pharaoh. That was also a promise that came with both a journey and war. Moses did not just come in one day and they all followed him out of Egypt immediately. They were given a promise of freedom and their journey began. The journey ended in a battle to possess that freedom and in all this, God fought for them to secure their freedom.

When God promises, He secures. There is always a journey after a promise and a war for it to be possessed. The revelation here that can only received by prayer and not head-knowledge is that it is God that carries you through the said journey, fights the battle and wins the war for the possession of the promise.

This may be a silly point of note but head-knowledge of these facts will get you nowhere. Having a head-knowledge of it will only make you mouth it and “preach” it to others but like the ten and the rest of the people, you will easily forget when the situation really comes up at your face. Upon everything they had witnessed, everything they had seen God do with respect to promising and helping them through the journey as well as fighting for the fulfillment of that promise, they still forgot when they came near Jordan. And they were so close to the promise but they only retained a head-knowledge of what it takes for the promises of God to be fulfilled.

You have to allow it sink into your spirit by prayer and everything else; there is no promise without and journey and a fight but God who had made the promise will lead the journey and fight the fight.