YOUR PROMISED TOMORROWS

As you face your tomorrows in this new year there are some lessons Pastor Jack has shared that will help you. They involve the account of the Hebrew nation taking their first steps into the Promised Land. It was Spring, the season when the Jordan River overflows her banks with the waters from Mt Hermon and Lebanon. The river was surging with fast-moving water. God says to Joshua it is time to cross over and take the land. The question is how do they get across the raging river?

As Joshua and Israel stood on the banks, they knew it would take a miracle. If they waited a few months, they could cross the river easily, but now it is not possible unless something happened. It appeared to be bad timing. They might have asked, “Why now?”

There are two answers to that question. One, by crossing over now they would surprise their enemy and defeat them with Joshua’s 40,000 fighters. Also, their families would be safe because the enemy could not cross the Jordan to retaliate. The secondary answer is God was going to work a miracle and verify His presence was with them just as He did four decades previous when He brought them across the Red Sea.

There are three lessons for us to learn from the call to enter the land of God’s promise.

GOD’S PRESS

“Take up the ark of the covenant and cross over before the people.” So, they took up the ark of the covenant and went before the people.” (Josh 3:6)

The first principle is God wants to “press us past the preceding.” The human disposition is to rest on our laurels. God’s people are people of tomorrow. We are a people who are ‘on the route to’ and not simply living ‘in the memory of.’ Israel was moving in response to God pressing them past the preludes.

They were told “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it.” (Josh 3:3) God wants to press us forward. He wants us to realize that He’s never outdone Himself nor will run dry on what He can do. He is coming in power to represent Himself afresh.

GOD’S PROXIMITY

The second principle is God wants us to know that He is with us. Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you.” (Josh 3:10) God wants to demonstrate His power so we will know He is with us. The God of ‘the crossing of Jordan,’ today is still calling us to believe for the infiltration of the impossible by the power of His Spirit. God will show Himself powerful which is needed to penetrate, enter, and possess tomorrow.

“And the Lord said to Joshua, “This day I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” (Josh 3:7) Just as God was present with Joshua, He wants you and I to know I am with you, and you can count on my presence. He wants us to be a people of expectation.

GOD’S TERMS

The third principle is You do not get to determine how the miracle works. As soon as the feet of the carriers of the Ark of God’s Presence touched the surging waters the river stopped. The Israelites didn’t see the waters pile up by wind like at the Red Sea. The waters were obstructed out of their sight about twenty miles north near a little town called Adam. Though they didn’t see what happened it was a miracle. God predicted that in three days this would happen, it occurred at that exact time, and it lasted the right amount of time necessary for two million people to cross.

Pastor Jack said, “Miracles require that you leave the terms to God, trust Him to decide how He wants to work, and then praise Him for how He works.”

PENETRATING AND POSSESSING YOUR PROMISED TOMORROWS

As we begin a new year, we, like Israel, stand at a river separating us from our tomorrows. For each of us it might be a different circumstance. In the looming challenge we know we can only cross over if God does a miracle. In the conquest of tomorrow we will never possess all the possibilities without God’s power and presence.

God wants us to cross over the rivers in our lives that separate us from our tomorrows. He determines the exact time, and He will do a miracle in order for us to cross. Entering our tomorrow’s means that God wants to press us past where we are today, He wants to demonstrate His power in and through us, and He wants to use us to transmit a testimony to a new generation. We must believe and respond to Him in faith and cross over. 

What is involved in making up our minds to enter tomorrow? We can talk about it. We can dream about it. We can believe for it, and even make resolutions, but there is a point where we must rise in faith and cross over though the timing and circumstances are not suitable. We need great faith to move into a miracle, to progress in a miracle and to memorialize the miracle when it is over.

In speaking about this miracle, Pastor Jack said, “I would like to place my finger in the center of your chest and say that the Lord wants to prove Himself to you by some means in the near future of your life in such a way that whatever you face beyond that you will always know because of what He did now. He is going to take you from one victory to the next. God wants to show Himself in your life.”