Tag Archives: Rest

Within! With Out?

Posted on by under Bible, Christian, Excellence, Hard Work, LifeGiving, Righteousness, School Of The Spirit, Teamwork, Training

Whatever your interior reality is will determine what you release into the reality that is your life! Whatever is closed to you will only be opened to you as you open up to the possibility that its reality is not yours!

Joshua 6

“1 Now Jericho was tightly shut because of the sons of Israel; no one went out and no one came in. 2 The Lord said to Joshua, See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors.'”

Have you ever noticed that the very thing that God says is yours becomes ‘tightly shut’ when you show up to possess it?

Jericho was closed! Jericho was not going to open up simply because those who were given it showed up to receive it!

Jericho was a city that was the initial city the children of Israel were to conquer in order for them to conquer the land God promised Abram and his Seed.

The physical land of promise was not the entire land that was promised. We learn this from Paul in Romans 4:13. “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.”

So, just like Jericho was not the extent of Abraham’s physical seed’s inheritance, neither was Canaan land the extent of what God promised and showed Abraham He was giving to him.

Seeing is believing!

The faith teachers teach that faith believes before you see.

Yet, when God was promising Abram and Joshua what was theirs by a gift He showed them limited natural things to reveal the scope of His promises to them.

Genesis 13

“14 The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; 15 for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever.'”

God then instructed Abram to put feet to his faith. “‘Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you.'” [Verse 17]

In my upcoming Book, Who Is The Israel of God, And What Does That Have To Do With Me, I talk about how Abram had an encounter with the Lord on the Cross.

God told Abram to look north, south, east and west for all the land that he could “see” would be given to him and to his Seed forever. He then told Abram to “Arise and walk across the land, or carry the cross he saw on the land of promise.”

That gifted land represented the entire planet. But Abram had to obey God’s command to see it and walk across what he could see in the natural.

God will give a glimpse of what He is giving and commands us to see to the farthest regions of what He calls us to reach and realize.

Seeing is believing!

Joshua saw a walled city tightly secured and impenetrable in the natural!

What has God shown you that looks impossible from your vantage point?

What has God given you that you know there is no way in the natural you can take [receive] what God has promised you?

What do you see when you look at the very place, thing, or people that God says is yours?

Seeing is believing!

I believe this is one reason Jesus would later say, “According to your faith will it be done to [for] you.”

Faith does not deny what is naturally confronting you. Faith sees beyond any impossibility to what God says is true, and then it motivates you to move forward with confidence that every challenge will be overcome.

Faith comes [is revealed and received] by hearing what God says is the truth. Faith is  activated when we move out from where we are to where God says we are supposed to be, and into what we are supposed to be doing.

Jericho was tightly shut! Its walls were so huge they could not be penetrated naturally!

How was Joshua and the children of Israel supposed to take it? First they had to face the obvious which was what they saw in the natural. Second, they had to believe God by believing that God knew how to overcome the challenges posed in the natural. Third, they had to hear what God commanded them to do. Fourth, they had to obey all that God said for them to do. And lastly, they had to begin walking!

That last step is usually the hardest step. I know I listed it last but the first step forward is always the hardest step you will take. Talking yourself into starting begins with changing your self talk!

“I can’t!” “I’m not!” “It won’t!” “It can’t!” These are not the motivating messages that inspire an invasion into the impossible!

Now to the title Within! With Out?

Jesus said, “The kingdom is within you.” He also said, “You must be born again in order to see the kingdom.” He also said, You must be born of the Spirit and water to enter the kingdom.” [Luke 17:21; John 3:3, 5]

You will never enter what you cannot, or will not see!

If you do not win the war within you will never win the war around you!

You will do without until you overcome what is within you that contradicts what God says to you!

If you can not see the possibilities arise within you ,you will never see the impossibilities fall around you!

The kingdom of God within you is given to you to see what God has given to you that does not yet have His kingdom within it!

Getting you to heaven is not God’s goal! Getting heaven in you so you can reveal and release heaven here on earth is God’s goal! That is why Jesus said to pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done IN earth as it IS IN heaven.” [Matthew 6:10 KJVB]

Why do you think God commanded Joshua and the children of Israel to walk around Jericho one time for six straight days?

Why do you think God commanded Joshua and the children of Israel to walk around Jericho seven times on the seventh day?

Remember, God told Moses no work was to be done on the seventh day as it was a day of rest. Yet, on this seventh day they were to work [walk] more than on the first six days of work. To me this proves once and for all and beyond any shadow of a doubt that Sabbath rest has nothing to do with a specific day. Sabbath rest has always been about obeying God. The writer of Hebrews makes this abundantly clear to those who have the ability to see what God had revealed.

Hebrew’s says to labor to enter God’s rest! What does labor and rest have in common? Do you see the conundrum?

God commanded Joshua and the children of Israel to walk around Jericho a total of 13 times before the miracle would happen. Why thirteen? Well six is the number of fallen man and seven is the number of God’s perfection. So we could say God one upped fallen man!

Thirteen is also a number that represents rebellion! For instance:

  • Nimrod was the 13th in Ham’s lineage. Nimrod tried to replace God!
  • The valley of Hinnom or its variation occurs 13 times in Scripture! Hinnom is the place rebellious Jews burned their children to the false god Molech!
  • In the first century Gehenna, the Greek equivalent of Hinnom, represented the place of future punishment for rebelliousness!
  • In Romans chapter 1 Paul lists 23 characteristics of sinful people. Hater’s of God is number 13!
  • The dragon of Revelation is mentioned 13 times!

You should get the picture [pun intended]! So God commanded the war against rebellion to begin with extreme obedience. Everything to be overcome must be overtaken by the opposite spirit the spiritual war involves!

Joshua:

  • Don’t look at those walls!
  • Don’t look at those gates!
  • Don’t look at those warriors!
  • Don’t look at that king!

Joshua:

  • See the city that I have given to you!

If you pass this test then every test after that will not seem so terrible!

See, I believe that each time Joshua and the children of Israel walked around that city they saw something they did not see the previous times they walked it.

I believe each time they walked around that city they began to see what God was saying they were receiving.

I believe as they saw less of what was in their way they began to believe that what was beyond what they were seeing was within their reach!

What is within your reach that you still don’t see because what you are focusing on is keeping you from seeing what God has given you?

Seeing is believing!

Dr. Kevin M. Drury, DMin

A Hisstorymaker

 

 

FACING YOUR GREATEST FEAR

Posted on by under Bible, Christian, Excellence, LifeGiving, Righteousness, School Of The Spirit, Training

When the children of Israel reached the Jordan River they were faced with a supreme challenge from their Supreme Commander.

I am not saying there were not major challenges in the wilderness, nor am I discounting the anxiety that may have been present in those challenges.

I just imagine them standing at the river bank waiting on God to split the waters so they could cross into their place of purpose. Knowing human nature the way I do I can see them staring at the river waiting, waiting, waiting for God to speak to Joshua as He spoke to Moses. “Why are you complaining. What do you have in your hand? Stretch out your “staff”! Stand still and watch Me perform a miracle for you.”

Those instructions never came!

If you are going to place yourself in your place of divine purpose you should not expect God to say what He once said, nor do what He once did. Instead they heard [my paraphrase], “You will have to step into the raging river if you want to enter your promised land.”

Those called to carry the Ark of the Covenant had to step in first. That is the real test of leadership. Can you lead when what you expected to happen is not happening the way you expected?

Will you believe the God you say you believe in? “Be the first to step into the flooded river.”

God said the priests must step into the river!

God said the priests must stand in the river!

God said the priests must stay in the river!

Can you imagine standing still, holding the Ark of the Presence of God on your shoulders, for however long it took anywhere between 1.5 to 5 million people to cross the Jordan River? Only when all of God’s people crossed over were the priests allowed to leave the River.

This is what God actually said, “It shall come about when the soles of the feet of the priests who carry the ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth, rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan will be cut off, and the waters which are flowing down from above will stand in one heap. . . . . 10 For the priests who carried the ark were standing in the middle of the Jordan until everything was completed that the Lord had commanded Joshua to speak to the people, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua. And the people hurried and crossed; 11 and when all the people had finished crossing, the ark of the Lord and the priests crossed before the people.” [Joshua 3:13; 4:10,11]

Until we learn to rest in God will we will never discover the rest of God. We will also never rest in the ever changing and unsettling world we live in and are called to settle.

Did you notice how God identified Himself? He did not call Himself the Lord God of Israel. He called Himself the Lord of all the earth. This is a huge pronouncement that many have missed.

God identifies Himself, or is identified, as the God of Israel over 200 times. All but 2 of those are in the Old Testament. Yet here in Joshua 3 He identifies Himself by a different name, The Lord of all the earth, 2 times. The first time is in verse 11, “Behold, the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth is crossing over ahead of you into the Jordan.”

The is the first time in Scripture God identifies Himself by this name!

The Presence of God, carried on the shoulders of certain priests of God, preceded the people of God into that which was flooded, moving swiftly, and was very unstable!

The Jordan River begins at the foot of Mount Hermon to the north and empties into the Dead Sea to the south. The Jordan descends approximately 3100 feet from its headwaters to the Dead Sea where it ends its journey. At the time of Jesus the Jordan could reach almost 5000 feet wide. Today it is no where near that width.

Jordan means to descend, to decline, to be brought down, among other things. It ends in the Dead Sea. The metaphor is representative of a person whose life is in decline and heading toward death.

This is what happened to the water once the priests settled in their place of rest in the middle of the River. “The waters which were flowing  down from above stood and rose up in one heap, a great distance away at Adam.” [Joshua 3:16]

Adam is the man of sin whose sin brought death into the human race! By rolling the water all the way back to Adam God was saying everything Adam passed on to man was being rolled back, off of and away from those entering their place of promise.

Why would God do that? Why would God do that at this moment in history? Why would God identify Himself as the Lord of all the earth right there, right then?

I am convinced that God identifies Himself this way to the children of Israel as the Lord of all the earth because the promise of a promise land was made to Abram, before he became Abraham, the converted covenant man of faith.

We find that promise promised the first time in Acts 7 when Stephen is testifying before the Sanhedrin. “2 The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives, and come into the land that I will show you.'”

In Genesis 12 God told Abram the 2nd time, when he was in Haran, to leave his father’s house and go to the land that He would show him and eventually give to him.

In Genesis 12:3 God preached the gospel to Abram when He said to him, “And in you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” Paul tells us in Galatians 3:8 this was the gospel being preached to Abraham.

Paul writes in Romans 4:13, “For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith [believing God and staying faithful to God].”

Are you aware that just like the descendants of faithful Abraham, you will have to step into your greatest challenge to reach your promised purpose. When you do you position yourself to change the entire world, or at the least your entire world.

In the Old Testament there were a select few of the priests chosen by God to carry the Ark of His Presence. In the New Testament every born again believer is a priest called to carry God’s presence.

Will you risk it all in front of all those following you?

If not, you disqualify yourself from being God’s leader! Why? If you are waiting on someone else to take the risk you are called to take you automatically become a follower!

On the surface the flooded River the children of Israel stood before looked scary, inconvenient and very risky. They did not realize under the turbulent surface was a place of rest!

Below the surface stood dry ground and stones of remembrance that were to remind them what deliverance is all about, as well as their part in participating in their deliverance.

Leaders must learn to rest in what God is saying so they can rest in where God says to take a stand.

Leaders take the maximum risk so that the rest of God’s people’s transition will be much less stressful. Welcome to the school of the Spirit in leadership training!

I can imagine the fear they had to face when the reality set in that the God who had delivered them from Egyptian bondage with a strong right hand of power and authority, and had kept them in their 40 year wilderness wanderings with that same power and authority, now was telling them they have to take a huge step of faith into their place of divine purpose, trusting they would not perish in the process of going from wandering and wondering in a wilderness to accepting full responsibility for possessing all the promises God had made to them while they were in bondage.

They were told manna would no longer fall from heaven! In the place of their purpose they would have to work the land that had unlimited resources. The land had full provision but they would have to labor in the land to extract it and benefit from it.

Provision would not fall from heaven. It would come from the land [promises] they were to live in and possess!

In the land of promise they would have to confront their enemies and dispossess them from what God had promised to them.

Making a decision to be proactive in uprooting everything in our lives that stands in opposition to and in the way of God’s perfect plan for us is a prerequisite to our possessing our possessions.

In the New Testament we learn we do not battle against flesh and blood. This is true! Our enemies are not other people.

Our primary enemy is ourselves! The devil is not our primary enemy. Our primary enemy is our own flesh [carnal, sinful, immature and irresponsible ways]! Paul says in Romans that our flesh is at enmity with our new true identity in Christ and that it wars against the Spirit of God, and the Spirit wars against it.

The devil is already dispossessed and he only has access to our possessions when we invite him to feed at our table of timidity and carnality.

Another way to look at God telling His leaders to step into and stand in the midst of the river is ‘rivers’ stand for moves of the Holy Spirit and the various anointing’s that are  resident in the Holy Spirit, in you.

“Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. This Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit who they had not yet received.”

Stepping into, standing in and resting in the moving of God’s Spirit and His anointing on your life is vital to functioning as one of His leaders. If we are not moving with God we become the clog that creates hinderances to where He is moving. The world we are called to transform will only be transformed after we are transformed by His Presence and anointing.

What is your greatest challenge in the context of and in conflict with what God has promised you?

What appears on the surface to be so unstable because it is constantly shifting that you stand shaking on the shoreline opposite your divine purpose?

What is sitting under all that appears shifting and unstable just waiting for you to step into the very substance that creates consternation, waiting for you to stand there, and to find a rest that you never thought you would find?

What world is waiting on you to transform as you tremble in fear facing what appears to be traumatically terrifying?

God delivered you from where you were in order to deliver you into your place of purpose where He has always seen you successfully possessing your possessions [promises]!

Will you face your greatest fear and fearlessly and faithfully move forward?

Dr. Kevin M. Drury, DMin

A Hisstorymaker

Grace Works!

Posted on by under Bible, Christian, Excellence, LifeGiving, Righteousness, School Of The Spirit, Training

This is what we find in Genesis 6:8 KJV.

“But Noah found grace in the eyes of God!”

This is such an interesting statement. What makes it so interesting and profound is the context in which Noah found what he found when he finally looked into God’s eyes. Actually, Noah was able to see all the way into God’s heart when he looked into His eyes. God’s grace does not originate in the eyes of God but the heart of God.

The context is God was sorry that He had made mankind. The reason for God’s feeling the way He did was that His prized production became vile and violent.

“Then the Lord  saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” [Verse 5]

To understand the veracity of this scene you must understand that Noah was included in God’s description of the condition of mankind.

Grace Is

What caused Noah to look into God’s eyes when he and every other person were only interested in living their life so loosely?

I believe that we find the answer in verse 3. “But My Spirit will not strive with man forever.”

God, by His Spirit was striving with every man, but only Noah responded to God’s striving. The word striving has to do with contending with, working with, judging in the sense of acting as an umpire. An umpire oversees sports events letting the participants know what is safe and what is out, what is fair and what is foul. Striving also means to plead with and to vindicate.

What we discover in this verse is that God will, after every effort is exhausted, cease to work with man to get him to change the direction he is heading in that is contrary to God’s heart for him. Noah must have submitted to God’s dealings with him, and by submitting to God he discovered and accessed the part of God’s character [grace] that empowered him to live totally for God.

Noah’s name means rest. Noah finally stopped his striving against God and rested in the nature of God. When we find the rest of God we will discover the rest of God.

What was the evidence that Noah found grace in God’s eyes? He began working with God! Noah cooperated with God and as a result of his submitting to God, God was able to co-mission him in the primary mission to save mankind from themselves.

God’s grace enabled Noah to work for and with God, not against God! Somehow work has become a four letter word in some ‘grace’ circles. Well meaning people, I am sure, reduce grace to the ability to decide they don’t have to work, or to be productive. In other words, they have deduced that God is a-okay with their laziness and or sinfulness.

Noah [rest] worked! Noah [rest] performed a task! Noah [rest] performed his task to the standard God required of him! That is what grace does. It enables us to get God’s work done God’s way.

We must realize that work is not a part of the curse that resulted from Adam and Eve’s sin. Unproductive work is a result of the curse.

Work is a part of creation and God’s redemptive purposes for the earth!

In Genesis 3 we find two very interesting verses:

Verse 8 – “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.”

Verse 15 – “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.”

Verse 8 reveals that God gave man access to the Garden and verse 15 reveals that God gave man responsibility for the Garden. There are a lot of people who have been given access but refuse responsibility. If you will not be responsible for something then you cannot be given authority over something.

That’s something isn’t it?

Friends, grace works and grace works very hard. Grace is not lazy and those who accept God’s grace also work very hard. Otherwise, it is not God’s grace.

For HIS Glory!

Dr. Kevin M. Drury, DMin