POSSESSING YOUR FUTURE – PART 2

Some Background:

The children of Israel have been wandering in the desert for forty years. They are standing at the edge of the Jordan River, ready to cross over into the new land, knowing that the moment they cross that river it is an act of aggression, the moment they cross over where there are already seven other nations living it is an act of war. They will be throwing down the gauntlet the moment they get to the other side. On the other side of the river there were seven nations, every one of them larger and stronger than the Israelite nation. Israel did not have any army. They had been in slavery for 400 years. They are going to cross the river and enter into who knows how long a period of battle and war. Now you know why YHVH is saying: [Be strong and courageous]. Now what gave Joshua the confidence to move ahead? [I Command you -- be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For Adonai your Elohiym is with you wherever you go.] -- Joshua 1:9. What gave Joshua his confidence to move ahead? YHVH said, [Remember who you are doing this for. You represent the King of Kings. You are on assignment from Almighty YHVH. Who do you think told you to do this? If I told you to do it, I am going to be with you.] That's the nice thing about being in YHVH's will, when He tells you to do something; He gives you the power and ability to do it. YHVH has never sponsored a failure, in fact, YHVH says: [I am going to be with you; now step out in faith!] If you have your Bible with you, circle the words [afraid] and [discouraged]. These are the two enemies that will prevent you from possessing your future. These are the two things that will keep you from becoming all YHVH wants you to be; fear and discouragement. Fear keeps us from getting started, [I do not even want to try -- I could never do that.] Discouragement keeps us from continuing, from finishing. Fear and discouragement keep us from making our lives count; they keep us from being all YHVH wants us to be. But YHVH says, [Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged! I am with you.] That is the bottom line: It is fear that keeps us in the desert, when we should be living in the Promised Land. The thing I like about Joshua is he was a man of courage. Courage is when you move ahead in spite of your fear and you witness to that person at work, you make that assignment, try that project or go after that dream. You do it in spite of your fear. A lot of people have courage, we have been seeing it displayed many times here on TTN. We have seen obstacles that look like they cannot be overcome and sometimes we have experienced fear, but we know that YHVH is with us saying, [Be strong and courageous, I am with you, I will see you through, just step out in faith.] I have seen it displayed in some of my friends on here, personal lives as you have faced illness, disappointment and things that just seemed to pull you down. Yet you have been strong and courageous realizing that YHVH is with you and that He will see you through, you have just got to step out in faith. I think what I admire most about Joshua was that he was a man of conviction. He was willing to stand alone for what was right, he was willing to go against popular opinion and he was willing to do the unexpected, the unusual and the [not normal] thing. Even when society said, [Do this!] he said, [No, that is not the way to do it.] He was a man of conviction. The Bible said that 40 years earlier.

Moses had chosen 12 spies and they had gone into the Promised Land to spy out the land and they came back. Ten of the spies said, [No way! We cannot do it! They are powerful and strong. They are like giants. They will eat us up. We were like grasshoppers in their sight.] And everybody said, [Yes, that is right! We cannot do it.] But there were two men who stood out in the crowd, two men who understood this lesson about possessing your future, two men who said, [We can!] It was Joshua and Caleb. They said [We can do it! We can take them on! They are like bread ready to be eaten up. Let us take them on!] It is interesting, forty years later, YHVH had to let the entire adult population die off and only two of those original people got to go into the Promised Land, Caleb and Joshua. Some of you are saying, [I do not know why I should step out on faith. It is pretty comfortable right where I am. I like my life as it is. Why should I shake it up? I am getting older.] Joshua was 80 years old when YHVH called him to cross the Jordan River and go into battle for the next 25 years. It is never too late to say [Yes!] to YHVH. Nobody remembers the people who say [It cannot be done!] We only remember the people who say, [It can! With YHVH, it can be done!] Nobody remembers the negatives, the people who say it cannot be done; the 10 spies, nobody even recognize their names. But everybody remembers the people who said, [We are going to step out in faith. We are going to go for it. We are going to make our lives count.] That is what Joshua did. It is interesting to me that the name Joshua means Deliverer / Saviour. He was the deliverer for his people, He delivered them into the Promised Land and he beat off all seven opposing nations and 31 different kings. Thousands of years later YHVH told Mary to Name her boy Joshua. Yeshua is a name that means the same thing as Joshua in Hebrew. Yeshua was named after Joshua because he too, would be a deliverer. YHVH said just like that great deliverer of old I am sending a New Deliverer to the world. What is the parallel? The parallel is that the other Joshua (Yeshua) wants to take possession of your life. Just like the first Joshua was to take possession of the land, Yeshua wants to take possession of your life. You can do it by stepping out in faith and trusting in Him today. Or maybe you have already taken that initial faith step, but now you want to possess your future, you can do it by setting up a plan; staying in the Word and stepping out in faith.