The Promised Land: Little by Little

SCRIPTURE
Exodus 23:29-30
29 But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you.
30 Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.


OBSERVATION
The Lord told the Israelites that He was going to give them the Promised Land as their inheritance, BUT that He was not going to give it to them all at once. Instead, they were going to have to conquer the Promised Land little by little. He gave them a practical reason for this — if He were to give them the Land all at once, they would not be able to handle it.

If God had given the Israelites the land all at once, their numbers would not have been sufficient to populate the land and much of it would have gone unmanaged and unmaintained because their population was not large enough to be able to inhabit the cities and govern the territory. As a result, the cities would have deteriorated and the land left unproductive.


APPLICATION
If the Israelites are a spiritual example of our own walk of faith, then we can draw a direct correlation between their physical Promised Land and our spiritual Promised Land. In our own life, there is territory that God desires us to take and govern. This territory is vast and beautiful but God gives us only as much as we can handle at any one time. As we walk in victory in our lives, then He gives us more and more territory.

Every victory results in a little more maturity and increases our ability to rule the territory that God gives us. If God were to give us all He desires to give us all at once, we would be unable to handle it! Instead of instantly becoming super-Christians, we would instead by destroyed as our immaturity attempted to handle our newly found power and authority.

So instead, He gives us territory that is enough to challenge us — challenge our faith, our gifts, our knowledge — and stretch us. As we learn the things He wants us to learn and walk in victory in the areas He is calling us into, then He gives us a new challenge. Little by little we "inhabit the land" He has given us as an inheritance — a territory we already have as a birthright but which we are not ready to possess in actuality.

So today, the key for me is to walk in victory in the areas He is calling me to. My concern is not the territory of tomorrow, but the faithfulness required today. While I must always fan the flame of desire to possess my entire Promised Land, I must not forget that the process is more about victory in the current battle then it is about the entire war.

I must live in this tension. I cannot become complacent and assume that today's victories will carry me through tomorrow. The Israelites made this mistake far too many times and ended up leaving pockets of their Promised Land unconquered as they made peace agreements with the enemy because it was convenient or easy. At the same time, I cannot become overly aggressive and try to take territory that I am not ready for.


PRAYER
Lord, help me to see the challenges that are important for me to fight today. Continue to stretch me, continue to challenge me, continue to move me onward. But help me to consolidate the territory you have given me up to this point. Let me never become complacent and make the assumption that yesterday's victories need never be revisited, lest I give back territory to the Enemy because of a lack of vigilance. Amen.