Napoleon said “The object of war is victory, the object of victory is conquest, and the object of conquest is occupation.”
This week has held a few new things for me. I started officially as a new board member for our kids’ school and will also be teaching my first large group session for our Middle School Youth at our church. A few of my close friends are always surprised by how much I can wrestle with a lack of confidence and self-doubt. Apparently I present more confidently than I often feel inside. Since I was a young girl I seem to easily vacillate between waves of supreme confidence and then a deep wrestling of doubt and insecurity. As I anticipate leading the large group session this Sunday for our youth I confess I am filled with an overwhelming onslaught of negative emotions. It really makes no sense to my brain. I know my heart is to be a part of raising up a generation of giant killers, I have taught or led in large group sessions before and I don’t feel unqualified to teach on the subject for this week, but for some reason I feel sick to my stomach with nerves upon waking and sleeping. The other morning I awoke from a restless night, filled with vivid dreaming and frequent waking. I just felt off. So off that weeping seemed like the only appropriate response. I was reminded of a prophetic word I gave to someone this past summer: “Whenever the fight feels disproportionate to the battle, you know you’re fighting for something bigger than yourself…you’re fighting for a mindset. You’re fighting for the living Christ.”
I returned home after dropping off the kids at school and all I could think about is needing to read the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters in the book of Numbers. I sensed I needed to be encouraged by the truth contained within them. These chapters tell of the spying out of the land which God had promised would belong to the people of Israel as their inheritance upon being set free from generations of captivity in Egypt. Twelve spies are sent out from the nation of Israel to spy out the land. Chapter thirteen begins with the Lord speaking to Moses, saying, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.” God’s chosen people (the nation of Israel) are a representation of us who are now born again in Christ and called the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16). I was reminded here of two things. Firstly, that the land is actually already ours. God has already promised it to us and has given himself by the Holy Spirit as the guarantee that we shall possess the whole of our inheritance in Him. Secondly, God regards us as chiefs. He sees each of us individually as leaders, influencers and world-changers no matter how much we struggle to see ourselves in the same light. As I re-read the words describing this spying-out process for the nation of Israel I felt the Holy Spirit show me that I am in a spying-out season of my own. This spying-out season for me is characterized by a sensation of shift. Transition is all over my life. Not overwhelmingly as an overnight-type-experience, but little by little the sense of change is upon me. My children are in school fulltime, my oldest is on the cusp of the teen hood, we are building a new house, I’ve started this website for writing, I am finally facing my fear of working out with my SIL and her good friend (FYI they are incredible fitness leaders and are challenging me in all kinds of ways hah), I am forming new and unexpected friendships and reengaging as a volunteer in our local church; there seem to be plenty of opportunities to overcome doubts and insecurities! Spying-out seasons are a gift from the Lord. They are seasons in which we are being trained to anticipate the mindsets we will need to battle and overcome in order to occupy the land God is giving us. God is saying to us that he sees each of us as chiefs and that what he has birthed in our hearts to see on this earth, the dreams and visions that he has been forming in us, is already given to us. He created us to occupy the land. But we are in these seasons needing to learn to be as confident in who he says we are and who He says He is on our behalf.
When we are in seasons of spying out, we will start to see giants. These giants aren’t other people or even principalities of darkness (although they can sometimes seem to be) but our false thinking and self-limiting beliefs. The land we are meant to occupy (i.e. the purposes for which we were placed on this earth) is going to present all sorts of opportunities for fear. As we begin to transition out of old seasons we will be faced with all sorts of intimidation in our thought life. God said there were seven things that needed to be spied out and reported on in the promiseland. Before the spies headed out he finished his instruction to them with this: “Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.” (Numbers 13:20). Spying-out seasons are also the very beginning of a great harvest season. Isn’t it amazing how much intimidation and fear can come out of our thinking at the beginning of a what is meant to be a very bountiful season? Maybe you, like me, are tempted to believe that it’s easier to run at this point. All the intimidation in my beliefs can cause me to believe that I’m doing something wrong and that maybe I’m in the wrong place, even though what is actually happening is holy progress. Maybe the onslaught of negative emotions is not a sign we are doing something wrong, but that good is actually coming. It’s the beginning of the harvest, but there are giants in our belief systems that need to be dealt with in order to sustain the greater harvest that can come only from land occupation. Why do we battle? So that we can actually occupy by bringing in kingdom culture and transforming the nature of the land.
The spies returned after forty days. Forty days of spying out. The number “40” represents new life, new growth, transformation, a change from one great task to another great task. A few examples from scripture include God flooding the earth for 40 days and nights. Moses fasted for 40 days and nights to prepare to receive the law on Mount Sinai. The Prophet Elijah walked 40 days and nights to reach the Mountain of God, Horeb. Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights to prepare for his public ministry. Even the human gestation period for new life is around 40 weeks. Our spying-out seasons really are meant to be seasons of personal transformation. Maybe we haven’t realized that what feels uncomfortable as we are in transitional seasons is us confronting the thoughts that will keep us from occupying the greater inheritance that God destined us for. Twelve spies went out. All twelve saw the same thing, but only two had victorious beliefs. The remaining ten brought a disheartening and discouraging report back to the nation of Israel. And it says of the ten that they seemed like grasshoppers in their own eyes, and so the giants regarded them the same way (Numbers 13:33).
It’s easier to run and go back to what is familiar rather than deal with our limiting beliefs and rise above them through renewing our minds with truth.
Spying-out seasons are where we must learn to see ourselves as BIG as God sees us and it’s in these seasons where we will also come up against a number of reasons for why we shouldn’t or couldn’t even see ourselves the way God does. It is just as we are beginning to taste the first fruits of a greater harvest that the accuser of our brethren (Revelation 12:10) will throw our way many, if not every reason he can to get us to doubt who God is saying we are. For me they come in the form of provoked memories of perceived past failures or negative comments that have caused me to shrink back. The voice of the accuser tells me that I haven’t prayed enough, that my motives are impure, that I’m still alive to sin and not dead to it like God says I am in Christ, that my old man is alive and well and needs to be managed, that I haven’t worked hard enough and am not qualified enough. These spying-out seasons are necessary for us and hopefully we will, by the Holy Spirit, see that they are a gift from God to allow us to confront the beliefs in our own minds that will keep us from not just battling but actually occupying the land we were meant to inhabit. Our promiseland isn’t just for us, but for the generations that will outlast us. We are meant to occupy so that those coming after us can walk in their inheritance as well. The apostle Paul reminds us powerfully with these words found in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take very thought captive to obey Christ.”
I hope to share sometime soon things I am learning to do to strengthen myself in the Lord so that I can take ground in my promiseland. What do you do to strengthen yourself in the Lord? Let me know here!