From Promise To Fulfillment: The Story of Faith and Obedience

SYNOPSIS: God has made thousands of promises in his Word to his people. Some of them are specific to that time and to those people, but most are general promises that are for you to possess. Picture them! That is an act of faith. Then align yourself to possess them. That is an act of obedience. Faith and obedience—may that be the testimony of your life.

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 11:16-18,23

So Joshua took this entire land: the hill country, all the Negev, the whole region of Goshen, the western foothills, the Arabah and the mountains of Israel with their foothills, from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, to Baal Gadin the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. He captured all their kings and put them to death, Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time…. So Joshua took the entire land, just as the Lord had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions. Then the land had rest from war.

God had promised Israel a land—the land of Canaan. The promise was made to Abraham hundreds of years before Joshua 11 as a condition of the covenant the Lord made with this man who would become the father of many nations, including Israel (that story is contained in Genesis 12-25), and much later, the father of our faith (Romans 4:16) The rest of Genesis all the way thorough Judges tells the story of Israel’s circuitous journey to physically get to the Promised Land (Exodus-Numbers), enter it to possess it by dispossessing the nations who lived there (Joshua), and then settle it (Judges).

Joshua 11 is at the heart of the conquest story—it is where the rubber of faith meets the road of fulfillment. When the Lord had commissioned General Joshua to lead Israel to cross the Jordan and go into the land to drive out the nations, he first gave him a picture of what the Promised Land would look like:

I promise you what I promised Moses: ‘Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you—the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites.’ No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you. (Joshua 1:3-5)

Joshua needed to picture what God wanted him to possess. He also needed to hear God’s twin promise of presence and power to maintain the courage it would take to go up against nation after nation that were bigger, better equipped and more experienced in war than the Israelite army. Which brings up several important points relevant for our faith journey today about moving from God’s promise to their fulfillment in our lives:

• We have to picture God’s promises if we hope to possess them—that is what “faithing” it is all about (“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.” Hebrews 11:1-2)
• The best of God’s promises are way bigger than what we can imagine, and even way bigger than what we need. God’s promise to Joshua was basically the entire Middle East. What that tells us is that God gives in abundance, which is simply defined as more than we need. (“God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20)
• The bigger the promises, the bigger the opposition to those promises we will face. The Enemy knows what is at stake in the people of God possessing the promises of God, so he throws up obstacles of every kind to discourage us from staying at the task of claiming them. Even though he is a defeated foe, he won’t go down without a fight. (“Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. I have come in answer to your prayer. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia.” Daniel 10:12-13)
• The promises of God are sure, but they are not automatic. We have a part to play: we have to possess them. God can’t possess them for us; we have to give spiritual effort to bring them into our possession. That too, is called faith: bringing in through spiritual effort from the unseen realm into our reality what God has already established. (“Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. 13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” Philippians 2:12-13)

God promised a land, then empowered Israel to possess it, but Joshua and company had to go out and fight to claim what was theirs by divine declaration. And they did. Notice how similar the reality of their victory was to the original promise:

Joshua conquered the entire region—the hill country, the entire Negev, the whole area around the town of Goshen, the western foothills, the Jordan Valley, the mountains of Israel, and the Galilean foothills. The Israelite territory now extended all the way from Mount Halak, which leads up to Seir in the south, as far north as Baal-gad at the foot of Mount Hermon in the valley of Lebanon. (Joshua 10:16-18)

God has made promises to you, too. It may not be a literal land, but it is a territory. Faith is the activity of claiming it; of bringing it into your possession. Picture what he wants you to possess—that is faith. Believe that it is yours by diving declaration—that, too, is faith. Then get after it. Possess what you have pictured. Align your prayers and your resources—spiritual, physical, financial—to possess it. Giving spiritual effort to possess God’s promises—that is called obedience.

Faith and obedience—that is the story of those who possess the promises.