One Trait that Will Get You Where You Want to be with God

If you're in a season right now where you feel like you're not progressing, you're getting frustrated with your situation, and you're wondering if it's going to change— maybe there is a prayer that you've been praying, a miracle you've been waiting for, and it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, and you're discouraged, you're frustrated, you're worried, you're confused— I want to talk to you because I believe that as you hear this message, not only are you going to be refreshed in the Spirit, But I believe that your faith is going to be stirred. The word of God today will strengthen your faith and cause you to move forward in victory in the mighty name of Jesus. I believe that your best days are ahead of you. Why? Because if Christ is in my life, then my future is always bright. If Christ is in my life, then my future is always bright. Why? Because if he's with me now, He'll be with me then, and if He's with me then, then my future is bright. My future is bright because Jesus is in my future. So I want you to remember that. I know it's discouraging sometimes when we face disappointment or setbacks, or when we feel like we're just spinning our wheels or pressing our hands up against a brick wall that just won't budge. I want to talk to you about how to get where you want to go in God. with this one simple trait. But I want you to type this in the comment section first, and I want you to say this by faith. I know you may not feel it. I know that you may not believe it right now. I know that the circumstances may seem to indicate otherwise, but I want you to type this by faith. I want you to type, my future is bright. Why? Because your future is bright. Your future is secure because you are in Christ. Christ is in you, and therefore Christ is in your future. Now, faith is the key to accessing all that God desires to give to you. Everything that God promised, everything that God is, everything that God wants to do in and through you is accessed by faith. You see, God made a deposit within you when you were born again, and that deposit is accessed as you walk out in faith. and obedience. The Christian life is really simple. Trust and obey. Trust and obey. Now, there are times when you may feel like giving up, and maybe you're watching this right now because you're in that season where you're asking questions that seem to come from the place of doubt and fear. Maybe you're praying things like, Lord, is this really going to happen? Lord, is this ever going to work? Or, Lord, should I just call it quits on this? Maybe the enemy's lying to you saying, if it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. Or, God's not going to use you in that way. Or you may realize your own inadequacies and forget about the power of God. So you may, like Moses, say, Lord, surely it has to be someone else. And maybe you're there. Maybe it's a health issue. Maybe it's a financial issue. Maybe it's an issue in your family. Maybe there seems to be a slowing in the progression of your journey in Christ. I mean that your spiritual life is not exactly where it should be. Maybe you feel like you're losing the fire of God on your life. Now, while we as believers understand that we will face trials and the central promise of the gospel is not health, wealth, and happiness, we do face trials. Let's make that clear. The fact of the matter is that God does miracles. That God gives breakthrough, that God does provide, and we mustn't forget that. We must have balance in all these things, and while we recognize that we will suffer persecution and trials, we also have to remember that God blesses, God restores, God heals, God delivers, God performs the miraculous. You may look at the situation and you may be stressing out and saying there's no possible way that this can happen. But remember that he makes a way where there seems to be no way. Think of the children of the— think of the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea. He caused the Red Sea and the waters to part and stand up like walls. And in the instance of scripture that we're about to examine, he caused walls to fall like water. Go to Joshua chapter 6. I want to show you something. And again, I believe the word of God is going to stir your faith today and refresh you. Now I want to challenge you here because remember that your flesh will always look for a distraction. The flesh will always seek out entertainment. The flesh is always so concerned with what's next, what else, what's over there, what's going on here. The flesh is— the flesh has a lot of difficulty focusing. So I want you to make a commitment right now that you're going to focus in and hear this word, receive this truth, and be liberated by it, but I want you to make the commitment to subject the flesh and say yes to the Holy Spirit. So stick to what is being taught here and give it your attention. Now, before I read this text, I want to point out to you that there's this idea where when you're studying the Scripture, you are to determine if that particular text is descriptive or prescriptive. And by that I mean— by that it's meant that descriptive is more like a story. It's a historical account. It's telling you what happened. Prescriptive is telling you what to do. So, for example, a very clear example of this would be descriptive is like what we saw God do through the life of Moses, and prescriptive would be like the writings of Paul where he's Writing to us epistles to the church. Here's how you live the Christian life. And while I do think this is a good idea, this idea is not itself found in chapter and verse. It is a construct, and it's a good one. I don't I don't necessarily think it's a negative one. It's a construct though, and it is a man-made approach to the study of scripture, and it's helpful, and it's use it's useful in the fact that. It'll help you to stay within the boundaries, to not try to add your own meaning to the text. But I do think that some draw such a hard line between these 2 ideas that it actually robs the believer of being able to glean truths that can be applied to their everyday life from the stories of Scripture. So even though something is historical, that doesn't mean that it can't inform our relationship with God. Just because the Bible is merely describing something as opposed to prescribing it, that doesn't mean that it doesn't inform how God interacts with man. For if God does it for someone else, why can't he do it for you? There's also this idea where when reading the Old Testament, the believer is discouraged from seeing themselves in any of the characters. You know, I think you might have heard the popularized phrase, and maybe you've seen videos floating around or memes floating around or text posts floating around where people will tell you, you're not David, you're not Moses. And I understand that. And I think that it's important that we not try to place ourselves in the place of Christ. And I think it's also important that we not think that the— I think it's important that we understand that the Bible is not us-centered per se. It's about Christ. It points us to Christ. But even in looking at these various different biblical figures, you can see how God interacts with man. It reveals the nature of God, the interaction that he has with these biblical characters. So, while this is a good idea to separate prescriptive from descriptive, it's important that we not be too married to that idea or take it to an extreme to where we can't be encouraged by what we read in a biblical historical account. You can still glean truths from historical accounts. You can still learn something about the nature of God from historical accounts that also apply to you. And so we can gain application from the descriptive. Just remember to note that in many of these instances, we don't prescribe them as in you have to experience it just like this. And that's really, I think, where that delineation is very helpful. Okay, now that I gave you that note, let's look at Joshua chapter 6. And the reason I said that was because Joshua chapter 6 is a historical account, but even though it's a historical account, we can still see something about the nature of God, and we can still see that human interaction with the nature of God, and therefore apply it to our lives. So this trait that I'm talking about that will get you where you want to go in God Is persistence. Watch this. Joshua chapter 6, beginning at verse number 1. Now the gates of Jericho were tightly shut because the people were afraid of the Israelites. No one was allowed to go out or in. But the Lord said to Joshua, I have given you Jericho, its king, and all its strong warriors. You and your fighting men should march around the town once a day for 6 So here's the prescription for the children of Israel. You and your fighting men should march around the town once a day for 6 days. 7 priests will walk ahead of the ark, each carrying a ram's horn. On the 7th day, you are to march around the town 7 times with the priests blowing the horns. When you hear the priests give one long blast on the ram's horns, have all the people shout as loud as they can. Then the walls of the town will collapse And the people can charge straight into the town. So this is the prescription that God gives to the children of Israel in order that they might take over this city. There were walls that were guarding this town. Now, when I read this, I thought to myself, Lord, why didn't you just send an army of angels to destroy those walls so that the people could march in? I believe it's because God wanted their participation. Now we obviously know that we don't find our spiritual freedom or our miracle through walking around walls 7 times, unless of course the Holy Spirit specifically instructs that, and you'll know it was the Holy Spirit by the end result. But we don't take this and say, okay, here's the formula for breakthrough, I got to walk around something 7 times. And so in that sense, again, going back to what I was saying a moment ago, I think that the delineation between Descriptive and prescriptive is helpful. But here, what we are looking at is the principle that God gives this command and the people followed it. Yet they probably didn't understand. They probably didn't quite get it. How is it that by marching around these walls, we're going to suddenly see the hand of God move on our behalf? They didn't understand how it was going to come to pass. But they knew that it was going to come to pass, and they knew this because the Lord gave them that instruction. Now, what was waiting for them on the other side of this wall? It was the promise of God. On the other side of those walls was what God had promised to them. It was their rightful inheritance. It was what God had promised to them by his own power. Now, they begin to march. And for 6 days they march around the city once per day. Now I want you to really appreciate what's happening here because think about this, this is very descriptive of your life sometimes where you feel like you're marching around the wall again and again and again and nothing seems to be happening. Think about the fact that they probably marched around the wall, the city, that first day And then looking at the wall, they saw no change. They saw no progress. Nothing in the natural realm indicated to them that this was going to work. Nothing in the natural realm showed them that they were actually going to see the fulfillment of the promise, yet they still followed the instruction. Day 2, they do it again, then 3, then 4, then 5, then 6. Now, by this time, I don't know about you, but I'll be very transparent here. If it were me, I would be looking at those walls and saying, you know, they haven't even begun to crumble. There hasn't even been a shaking. I don't see a crack in the wall. Nothing seems to be progressing. Nothing seems to be working. Nothing seems to be going according to what God promised. In fact, everything looks the same. And maybe there was some doubt. Maybe there were some questions, but the Lord told them, be silent, just do what I'm telling you to do. And we know that on that final day, they marched around the town 7 times. In other words, as they got closer to the breakthrough, and you need to hear this now, people of God, as they got closer to the breakthrough, it got more difficult. As they got closer to the miracle, it became harder. It was marching once per day for 6 days, and then on the 7th day, they march around 7 times. And so now it is 7 times the work on the 7th day. And this is my encouragement to you. This seems to be in the nature of God, as you'll often see. Like, for example, I think of Elijah when he had the false prophets or the people wet the altar. He had them soak the altar so that when he called down fire, it was clear that it was God. And in the same sense, I think this is what the Lord is doing here. Do everything in your strength, but know that it's my power. And so they're marching and they're growing tired. And again, I'm sure there were doubts. I'm sure there were questions. And maybe that's where you are now. You feel like you've been going around and around with this situation. And every month that goes by, you're telling yourself, well, maybe it's next month. Every week that goes by, you're saying, maybe it's next week. And as the days go by and the situation doesn't change, it can become discouraging. You might feel like God abandoned you. You might feel like God broke his promise, and you might be disappointed in the results. But I'm here to encourage you today. Keep marching. God will keep his promise. Keep doing what God said to do. He will back his word. The walls may still be standing, but they will come down. You might not see any progress. You might not see anything that indicates that it's actually going to happen. But he who promised is faithful. If God promised it. It's as good as done. If God said it, you can count on it. We don't judge what we believe to be the truth by our experience. We don't allow experience to inform what we think about truth. Rather, we allow truth to dictate how we perceive our experience. And we gain our truth, we ground ourselves in truth through the Word of God. So though your experience might say nothing's happening, God's word says he promised it. And so this is the trait. And in fact, as you begin to study the New Testament, you will find that faith and persistence in some instances, in some way, seem to be synonymous with one another. Persistence is faith endurance. Persistence is faith over time. And the reality is that persistence doesn't even begin— this is a word for someone here— persistence doesn't even begin until you feel like giving up. Now, I know that may not be what you want to hear. You may want to hear that you've been persistent this whole time. But you see, after you've exhausted all of your ability, after you've come to the end of yourself and you recognize your need for God and you recognize it can only be him, that's when persistence comes in because you've moved beyond your own strength and you've now stepped into his. Persistence doesn't even begin until you feel like giving up, but it's not over. He makes a way where there seems to be no way. And we get inside our own minds, don't we? We start to wonder if we made too many mistakes. We start to wonder if perhaps we're deserving of everything that's being withheld from us. And this is where the enemy can really begin to try to condemn you and try to discourage you because, again, we are flawed, and being flawed, we fall into these mindsets that are not conducive to faith. Amen. But I challenge you to think according to the word, to speak according to the word, to act according to the word, no matter what you see around you. I know that you might feel tired. I know that sometimes it feels like the burden is just too much to bear. But I believe you're connected to this moment right now for a purpose. Amen. And I want to encourage you, keep marching. Because we know what happened with the children of Israel when they finalized that final march and they sounded off as God told them to. Those walls came down. And it wasn't in their strength, it was in God's faith. Hear me now, please. Faith invites the strength of God. It is in our faith that he shows his strength. It is in our reliance upon him that he shows himself strong. So don't give up. It's a simple message, I know, but this is a word for you. I believe it. In fact, if this is speaking to you, let me know in the comment section. If I'm talking to you, Amen. Testify here in the comment section. Let your faith soar today. I know it may not look like it's gonna change. I know you've been praying for this for a long time. I know that it's a confusing situation, a discouraging situation. Maybe you feel like no one understands. You might even feel like you're all alone in this. Keep going. He who promised is faithful. Father, I pray that you help your people to stand strong in faith, continuing to do good, knowing that in due time they will reap the harvest if they don't give up. Strengthen your people today. In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. And I want you to type a big amen. 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