Greetings,
The kingdom of God is in our hearts. It is Christ in us that is the hope of glory. The unshakable kingdom is about who you are, not what you do. Who you are determines how you do every ‘what to do’ in life. Moses had to encounter the God of fire in the bush. He had to become consumed with the passion, zeal, and purpose of God in His heart. He had to know who God was and who he was so he could lead a generation of slaves into becoming a people who could overcome all things for the sake of God and the generations of God’s children.
Moses needed an encounter with God as his God. He needed to know that there was no separation between him and God. He needed to know that God and him lived together in all things. Moses needed a transformation by the life-giving God of heaven in order to lead God’s people into that same encounter in life. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was more about becoming the testimony of the children of God upon the earth than about being freed from Egypt. Being freed from a life of sin is only the invitation to become an expression of God’s life-giving people upon the earth. God wants us to become heaven powered from within. When we are empowered from within, we can do all things without.
Exodus 3:5 Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said also, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. 7 The Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. 8 So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite.”
When Moses had his encounter with God in the burning bush, it was a commission for him to lead God’s people into the land of promise. The land was a good and a spacious land flowing with milk and honey. It was a land of blessing, but it was also a land of resistance. In the land was the Canaanite (self-seeking), Hitite (fearful), Amorite (bitterness), Perizzite (superficially individualistic), Hivite (wicked – disconnected), Jebusite (trodden underfoot – trampled/defiled)and the Girgashite (discontent & wandering).
Deuteronomy 7:1 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them.”
These inhabitants of the promised land are a testimony to the ways of the kingdoms of the world. The administration of the kingdoms of the world and the justice system of the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, has humanity bound to a worldly testimony. The administration of the knowledge of good and evil is not the same as an administration of life. When we embrace a justice system of knowledge we tend to approach life with a fair or unfair paradigm in our thinking. We measure justice by whether something is right to us or wrong. I believe that there is a right and there is a wrong, but the real issue is not right and wrong. The real issue is life and blessing or death and curse. Only a relationship with God can give us the true fire of life. When we have a relationship with God in our hearts we are given the ability to increasingly embrace an administration of life. We can receive a revelation of God’s love for us and thus we can be empowered to love others. The internal motives of our hearts can change from motives of self-desire to living for the wellbeing of others.
Deuteronomy 30:9 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before your life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live…
The inhabitants of the land represented self-seeking motives, self-preserving actions, bitter judgments, aspirations driven by insecurity, self-focused agendas of personal success, an unwillingness to embrace differences, and a life of discontent wandering. These inhabitants represent the attributes of our hearts when we choose to live for ourselves rather than for God as our Father and for others as His children.
Moses was called by God to lead a people to become overcomers in a land of resistance. This was a type and a shadow of what God intends for us in the promised land of life. The promised land is not a land of geographical location. The promised land is for each and everyone of us. It is a land of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. It works in any life and in any geographical location. It is for every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It is a land of internal reality and a justice system of life. We cannot experience this land by the things we do, but all that we do will be affected by its existence in our lives. The promised land is a place of the human heart. It is the internal kingdom of life, the kingdom of God within. It is the testimony of Christ in us and it grants us a justice system of life and blessing.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
