Possessing The Promises | Daniel Bentley

And so they said, it's broken. It doesn't work. I took the pill, but I didn't get the peace. And what they failed to understand is that that promise, it must be mixed with faith, and then it gets activated through your obedience. Does that make sense? Every promise must be mixed with faith and activated by obedience. So here's the way that played out for the Israelites. God says to Joshua, I have given you every place the sole of your foot touches. Think about that. It's already yours, but it will only be realized as you walk it out. Joshua had to put feet to his face. [00:30:28] (42 seconds)  #FaithActivatedPromise

And what if, just like the Israelites, we're asking the wrong question. The question that they were playing on repeat in their mind was who can stand up against the Anakites, when perhaps what they should have been asking is who can stand up against our God? I love the way the apostle Paul puts it in Romans eight thirty one. He says, and let's read this together, what shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, then who can be against us? And by the way, when you read that little word if, don't think like, if if. No. No. No. In light of all these things, [00:36:03] (42 seconds)  #IfGodIsForUs

And at the same time, I'm really good at remembering and rehearsing and replaying all of my past faults and shortcomings and failures, and those things I have a detailed remembrance of. But I forget all the stuff God tells me to hold on to, even as I hold on to the things he tells me to let go of. You see, I'm like the Israelites. And my guess is, so are you. We have this proclivity for forgetting. And in particular, this seems to happen when life gets easy. [00:13:35] (35 seconds)  #RememberWhatMatters

Today is the day that I cross over. Yeah, there might be some walls, but I have a word. Yeah, there might be some giants, but I got Jesus. And Jesus can take down every giant. Your giant must fall. The walls must crumble. The chains must break. The the the shackles must fall. The prison doors must swing open because when God is for you, who can be against you? You see, we've wandered many of us for far too long. It's time. It's time. It's time to cross over and to take possession, to mix faith and obedience with the promise, and to enter the land. [00:37:46] (48 seconds)  #PossessYourPromise

Notice, my flesh faints for you. I'm in this dry place, and he's speaking there emotionally, internally. His heart was dry and it caused him to seek God and to cry out to the Lord. There's a beautiful thing about desperation. You know, we don't usually combine those two terms. Oh, I'm so beautifully desperate. No. No. No. And yet, there is something beautiful about desperation. Why? Because it opens the door for God to provide for us. When we're desperate, we cry out to God, which which opens the door for him to show up. [00:21:13] (39 seconds)  #BeautifulDesperation

And as you pray for that, ask him, Lord, what is your promise for me? I received a personal promise from the Lord this last week in our prayer gathering on Tuesday morning. I said, Lord, what do you wanna say to me? What's your promise? And he gave me a promise for my own life. He also spoke a promise to my son, and I believe he has one for you as well. Well, [00:05:07] (22 seconds)  #AskForHisPromise

Because it's not just a promise specifically, but there is a whole life of promise that he wants you to walk in and experience. It's what Jesus talked about in John chapter 10 when he's described this life of abundance, the abundant life. It's life overflowing, life bubbling up, life spilling out. It is life filled with joy, peace, victory, and love. That is your divine inheritance. It's what God wants for you. And yet, [00:06:19] (35 seconds)  #LifeOverflowing

I found that for many Christians, that life that I've just described seems to elude them, and it seems to always lie just beyond their graph grasp. You know, for many Christians, their experience is not unlike what the Israelites went through as they wandered through the wilderness. For them, it was like the life they wanted lied just beyond the Jordan, and they could see it with their eyes, but they could never quite reach it. It was like they were stuck on the wrong side of their promise. [00:06:54] (36 seconds)  #BeyondTheJordan

You can hear the emotion dripping from his voice as he implores them here. When you get there and life is good and you have everything you need, don't forget the Lord. And he puts them in remembrance, and it's a good word. Remembering is a dominant theme. It's a chord that gets struck over and over again throughout the book of Deuteronomy. In fact, the word Deuteronomy means repetition or second telling. And throughout the book, Moses is rehearsing all of the familiar stories to the people about what God had done for them. [00:10:58] (41 seconds)  #RehearseAndRemember

And and that's true in a spiritual sense too. There are things that God tries to put me in remembrance of, but I forget those things. I forget his promises. I forget how he's delivered me time and time again. I forget his faithfulness to me. I forget that he's removed my sins as far as the East is from the West. I I forget that he's promised his abiding presence, and that his mercies are new morning by morning. [00:13:04] (31 seconds)  #RememberHisFaithfulness

And so they knew where they came from, and they knew where they were headed. And the thing in between, that was the wilderness. And so for us in this life, the wilderness is representative of all those in between places, in between seasons. And maybe you know what I'm talking about because some of you are in just such a place right now in your life. You are in between jobs, or you're in between relationships, or or maybe you find yourself stuck or caught in between a rock and a hard place, and it's dry, and you're barren, and you're not where you want to be. [00:15:53] (41 seconds)  #SeasonOfInBetween

And even if that doesn't describe your current situation, as Christians, I think there's a sense in which all of us in our hearts know what it feels like to be caught in between two realities. Because just like they had been delivered from Egypt, we've been delivered from bondage and sin and and a life of of slavery, and we're headed to heaven. That's our future home. That's our destination. That's where we're going. And so we know where we've come from, and we know where we're headed. But in the meantime, in the in between, we find ourselves here. [00:16:34] (37 seconds)  #BetweenTwoRealities

You're not set free totally, not yet anyways. And and you're blessed, but you're also barren. You're full of faith on certain days, but on other days, you cower in fear. You have love, but you also struggle with lust. You're in a spiritual wilderness. And for any and all to whom that description might apply, I have some good news for you today. And it's this, God wants to meet you in your wilderness. Somebody say amen. You see, over and over again in the Bible, we find God meeting his people in the wilderness. [00:18:38] (41 seconds)  #DesperationBuildsDependence

All of these things took place in the wilderness. And so another question, why does God bring us, lead us into wilderness seasons? If it's part of his design. And here's the answer. He does it because the wilderness is the one place in this world where we get downright desperate. When times are good, we're much more prone to forget God. We already talked about this. Moses says, when you're in the land and and you have eaten and you're satisfied, then you're gonna forget the Lord. [00:19:57] (32 seconds)  #ProvisionFromTheRock

And what happened to them often happens to us. Right? We get saved, and then some long somewhere along the way, we get stuck, and we end up wandering. I've met so many Christians over the years who are just kind of wandering. They've spent their entire Christian existence just kind of barely squeaking by. And yeah, they're believers, and yeah, they're going to heaven, but they're not really thriving. Instead, they're just enduring. They've never entered into the life of victory and blessing and abundance that Jesus promised. And what I came here to tell somebody today is God has more for you. [00:27:02] (42 seconds)  #BroughtOutToBringIn

There is more that he wants you to experience, more victory that he wants you to step into, more abundance, more blessings, more promises. There is more that he has for you. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter six verse 23. This is such a wonderful verse. In fact, let's read it together out loud. It says, but he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land he promised on oath to our ancestors. Notice those two phrases. He brought us out from there. That's a reference to Egypt. [00:27:43] (33 seconds)  #GoInAndTakeIt

And that again is like so many of us, we settle for less than God's best. And the question, why? Why do we settle for less? And and there's an answer that's provided for us here in our text. It's the same thing that kept them from possessing it for so long, and it's fear. You see, there's always gonna be some big scary obstacle taunting you, tormenting you, and keeping you from possessing or experiencing your promise. For the Israelites, the things standing between them were walled cities and giants named the Anakites. Moses references them in verse two. He says, you've heard about the Anakites. [00:32:55] (43 seconds)  #GodGoesBeforeYou

And it's almost like defeat gets so ingrained in our subconscious that we lose before we even step onto the battlefield because we think that victory isn't a possibility for us, which is why we need this word from Moses just as much as Israel needed it. And here it is in verse three. Be assured that today everybody say today. Today. Today, the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you just like a devouring fire. He's gonna destroy them, and he's gonna do it because you have a promise. Yes. Your enemies might be bigger and stronger than you, but those same enemies are no match for your God. [00:35:17] (46 seconds)