This morning I reread chapter one of Beth Moore's book Believing God. This book is based off her Believing God Bible study, which is fantastic. Oftentimes Beth takes her Bible study workbooks and creates a chapter book from it, without all of the blanks to fill in. One thing that helps me to remember what I've read is to underline specific things that hit me and then go back a day or so later and type up those into notes. Then I put the notes into a notebook for reference. Below are my notes from chapter 1.
Believing God- Chapter 1 “Your Promised Land”
Certainly
those of us who have accepted Christ as our Savior have received the automatic
& glorious results of eternal salvation.
However the primary reason God left us on Earth after our salvation was
for our Christianity to succeed right here on this turf.
We’re
getting by, but getting by, was never our destiny. We were meant to be profoundly
effective.
The primary
goal of this book is to encourage any Christian who will listen to move to his
or her personalized place of divine promise and to flourish.
Your
promised land is the place where God’s personalized promises over your life
become a living reality rather than a theological theory. The land of promises includes, but is not
limited to, the following areas:
1.
God promised us to a place of
blessing. Blessing
is defined by neither ease nor worldly possessions nor stock-market
successes. Blessing is bowing down to
receive the expressions of divine favor that in the inner recesses of the human
heart and mind make life worth the bother.
2.
God promised us a place we could
live. God didn’t
promise the children of Israel
a place they could visit. He promised
them a place they could settle and dwell in blessing. According to John 15, New Testament believers
(that’s us) have likewise been called to a place of abiding. Living. Dwelling. Our personalized lands of
earthly promise are places we’re invited by God to dwell in Christ.
3.
God promised us a place where He
brings forth a great harvest. Deuteronomy 8:7-9
says: “For the LORD your God is brining you into a
good land—a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the
valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees,
pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and
you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper
out of the hills.” The truth is that your heavenly Father wants to show
His glory through using your life to bear tremendous fruit. Your personalized Promised Land is the
abiding place where you get to see God keep the promise of great harvest
through your life. Have you decided that
what you have done or what you are doing is all you will ever do? Ah, God’s far
too creative for that. Ephesians 1:18
says, “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be
enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the
riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.” God is going
to accomplish His agenda regarding heaven and earth no matter what you and I do
but we get to decide whether we’re going to be part of His process in our
generation. Our callings remain a hope
until we allow the eyes of our hearts to be enlightened and choose to accept
them.
4.
God promised us an abiding place of
great victory over our enemy. Our promised lands are characterized
by the presence of victory, not the absence of opposition. In God’s economy, much of what is worth
having is proved worth fighting for. If
you’re not presently occupying your Promised Land, rest assured the devil
is. God has given us the land, we must
go forth and take it.
Many
promises of God are unconditional, but His promises of full-throttle blessings,
abiding, fruit bearing, and conquering are not.
