After forty years of Wilderness living would you want to stay??
Can you imagine the anticipation and excitement in the Israelite camp as they were about to cross over the Jordan River??
I used to think the trip from Egypt to the Promised Land, was an extremely looong one. After all, it took the Israelites FORTY Years to make the trip!!
Did you ever wonder why they wandered in the wilderness soo long??
The Israelites who stood along the banks of the swollen Jordan River that day were not the same people who left Egypt forty years before!!
How come?!
Those Israelites who left Egypt behind were content to live in the wilderness. They complained a LOT and they lacked faith. They were content to live where it was hot and dry; and spiritually they were dry and discontent with their life and with God.
Crossing the Jordan River took courage as the Israelites saw the river swelling with the water rushing greatness of harvest time. It took faith to believe in a God able to push the water into a wall with dry soil between the towering crested river. Real faith.
They remembered hearing about the Red Sea crossing before they were born. Their faith wasn't based on a memory but on a relationship with the One true God.
It was a point of surrender. Total surrender of all that they were hanging on to in their wilderness experience.
Consecration.
Holiness.
A point of decision.
The Wilderness brings dryness and discouragement and sometimes we don't really want to leave that wilderness. We would rather stay in our closet crying out to the Lord, depressed and discontent with life.
God wants to meet us right where we are.
He will take us just as we are in all our self-righteous holimess of existence in our wilderness. Like a lamb, without one plea before a holy God who can truly take our discouraged self and make us into Christ-likeness for His glory.
The thing is, we don't realize how wonderful it is 'on the other side of the Jordan' because we are content in our discontent, satisfied to complain, rant, and live our life in some form of misery. Have you ever felt perfectly happy in your misery??
It is so wonderful on the other side of the Jordan, that we will never want to cross back again to the wilderness-side.
Crossing the Jordan brings victorious Christian living.
You start thanksliving and thanksloving instead of living a life of ungratefulness any longer.
This takes effort because it means walking with Christ and isn't just some sort of magical thing where there is no change involved on your part.
It means living the abiding life with Christ.
Christ living in you.
It means taking a new step in your eternal life, moving a step closer to heaven.
You need to make a better 'house of God' in your life. A Bethel. A place to worship God.
A place where you get alone with God and cry out to Him in surrender.
You can't do it in your own strength. It is time to stop trying.
Maybe your home is out-of-control.
Maybe you are out-of-control.
Maybe your children are out-of-control and you aren't seeking the Lord in this but instead are sinking into depression out of concern for them instead of laying this burden down at Jesus' feet.
If you cross the Jordan of Life, you will never be the same!!
Are you caught in a wilderness?
Are you living in defeat?
Are you perpetually living in discouragement and/or depression?
I have been there...and recently needed to renew my surrender and totally and absolutely surrender my life (again) to Jesus Christ.
Many people die in their wilderness just like the Israelites.
Literally, they live their whole live in misery, complaining, defeated, discouraged, down-hearted, and don't really want to accept the help to get out. They don't want to take the first step into the water and watch the miracle of the water back off into towers on either side of dry ground.
The Lord actually takes them. They die like the Israelites without ever knowing what it is like to live joyfully and thankfully in victory through Jesus.
God told the Israelites to "Be of good courage" over and over. There were giants in the Promised land on the other side of the Jordan. Even when we are right where God wants us, there are problems. Victorious thanksliving doesn't come without hassles and difficulties, it is just a way of walking with the Lord through these valleys and mountain tops.
Have you been in a wilderness?? Are you going to get your feet wet in the Jordan River as you step towards total surrender??
I am going to learn daily to walk in victory in Jesus with the tools of thanksliving and thanksloving joyfully as I journey this life. How about coming along with me??
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~Judith~
