Word of Life

Conquer or be conquered!!!

Joshua 13:1-7

Joshua the servant of God is advanced in age and he cannot go out for war again yet there was vast land that was meant to be conquered and inherited by the children of Israel. God speaks to Joshua and at some point God is lamenting that Joshua being the last leader of Israel to the Promised Land had to die before conquering the whole land that was meant to be an inheritance for the Israelites. Nevertheless, God tells him that He himself will drive out some of the nations that were occupying the land. Going back a few chapters, we see that Joshua had fought and conquered several kings and drove the inhabitants of the land out. I tend to believe that Joshua decided to take a break and basked on the glory that he had conquered so many kings thus he needed to take rest before fighting on the rest not knowing that age was catching up with him so fast.

Unfortunately, this is the same way that many of us Christians tend to behave. When we get saved, we relax and assume that all is ok now that we have been saved whereas in the real sense, that’s when the battle has gotten fierce with the enemy – the Devil. One thing we ought to realize is that, the minute we allow Jesus into our lives, we become automatic targets for the devil. Peter reminds the brethren in 1 Peter 5:8 “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” We need to be on the guard. The devil knows the power invested in you as a child of God and thus, he wants to devour you before you devour him. This is what we have never discovered as children of God and thus, we give the devil a foothold in our lives. When we relax in our faith, we tend to leave some territories unmarked and those are the areas that the devil will capitalize on and when he strikes us, we will be so vulnerable that we will not be able to resist him at all.

This is why the nation of Israel is suffering today and in constant fights with the Palestinians simply because; Joshua didn’t accomplish the task that he was given by God. He was told to conquer all the land but he just conquered a portion of it. Your life is a territory that need to totally conquered and subdued by the authority of God through Jesus. But you will find that most of us are still struggling to have total control of our lives simply because, there are some elements of our sinful nature that we haven’t conquered and thus, instead they are conquering us. Solomon tells us in Song of Songs 2:15 “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.” In other words, no one will come to take care of your own life; you need to do that for your sake, else, you will suffer the consequences.

Paul speaking to the Galatians tells them of the fruits of the Holy Spirit as well as the fruits of the flesh Galatians 5:16-24. You will come to realize that many of us are still down there struggling to bear the fruits of the spirit in their Christian walk yet what is most evident is the works of the flesh. There is one thing that we need to realize that, if we do not deal with what we are struggling with now, it will be passed on to the generation behind us and they will keep struggling for no reason simply because we refused to act on something when we were supposed to. This is what the nation of Israel is struggling with – the things their fore fathers didn’t accomplish. Is this the kind of inheritance you want to leave to your offspring’s? If you are struggling with a certain kind of weakness that may be leading you to sin, note that God told Moses to tell the children of Israel that, though he is a merciful God, he never leaves sin unpunished even up to the fourth Generation Numbers 14:18 ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

This too brings down generational curses. They all drain down to one root cause – someone didn’t do what he was supposed to do before his time was up. It is the high time we realized that the generations behind us depend and are and will be affected by our actions. The earlier we deal with the things that are troubling us, the better and thus, we will give our children a better life both physically and spiritually. When God was saying that He leaves no sin unpunished even up to the fourth generation, He meant that, what you and do, has spiritual implications on our offspring’s. Some of the things we are struggling with today in our personal lives maybe an effect of someone’s misdeeds sometime back in the years of our family lineage.

How then can we do this? We need to walk in step with the Holy Spirit and allow him to light up the dark areas of our lives so that we can deal with those elements that we struggle with. This is what Paul tells the Galatians and I believe it is applicable to me and you in this generation that we are living in today. He tells them… “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit let us keep in step with the Spirit” Galatians 5:16-18, 24-25. This is the only way that we can be able to know what we need to deal with and conquer it before it conquers us.

Amen!!!

September 7th, 2009 - Posted by Mutuma, Dennis | Daily Inspirations