Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: Let's extract some principles out of this. Obviously, but what's going on here is pretty simple. They are crowded with space. They go to Joshua and they say, "Look, we're too crowded." Joshua goes, "Well, take the hill country over here." They say, "Okay, but it's full of trees. Do you have something that's already cleared for us? A little easier?" And Joshua said, "Well, you have enough people you can take care of the trees yourself." They said, "Okay, but there's these Canaanites, the Perizzites, and some of the other 'ites' are in the land down there, and what do I do with those guys?"

Well, Joshua said, "I don't know where you guys have been the last seven years or so, but we've been driving those guys out of the land." "I know, but these guys have iron chariots. They're not like the other guys. They had spears. These guys have iron chariots." Joshua said, "You know, did God give us the land? Or did God not give us the land? Did God say I will drive them out of the land everyone who doesn't have iron chariots, but if there are iron chariots, you're stuck with them? Did God say that?" He says, "No, this is your land, and I will go before you just like I did in Jericho. Was Jericho a problem for me? Would you rather face a six or seven-foot wall or an iron chariot? I took the wall down without any issues. Why are you worried about the chariots?"

But there's a principle, and that's the principle we want to hammer at tonight. Now, first of all, we look at the complaint. This is what happens to folks, this is what happens to guys like me. We have a past success, if I can use that term, in our Christian life. We've partaken of some manna and been satisfied by it. We've won many victories. But then we stop fighting. We stop going to battle. We stop even looking for enemies. At that point, I start looking for something a little bit different. Find me a land that I don't have to clear. Find me a portion that I don't have to fight for. Can you give me something easier, Joshua, than this? Something I don't have to go to war for?

See, God wants our beginning and our ending to look the same. That's a good sentence to remember, especially if you're closer to the ending than the beginning. God wants our beginning and our ending to look the same. I started my journey with God red-hot, seeking, probing, learning, being challenged. I want to end it that way. God's never done with me. I've never really finished the race this side of heaven. These folks had these enemies that were deeply entrenched in the area. They wanted more land, but they never conquered the land they already had.

"God, give me more land. Make my life easier. Make my life more successful. Make my life more comfortable." But I've never really finished the job that I was set out to do in the first place. I've never conquered the land that God originally gave me to conquer. I've left things undone. I've put my sword away. I've put my plowshare away, and I stopped fighting. The real value of Christian character can never be assessed in terms of membership in a church or a Christian community or past exploits of Christian service. When the Spirit of God flashes His light into our souls, my friends, we lose the halo that we created for ourselves.

We think because I've had some great victories and stuff that I'm Holy Tim. And we create these self-made halos. But when the Spirit of God all of a sudden puts a light into our soul, I look and think, "Wow, there are still enemies in the land of my soul that I have not driven out." And when I drive those enemies out and then think, "I've got rid of them," I look and see a couple more Perizzites and a few Jebusites over here. Look at that Sinite hiding behind a tree. And then I drive them out. Then I find more. And this goes on all my life. Know where it ends? When I die. Then I'm home. Then I really own the land.

We find that God is always dealing with us singularly. Greatness has nothing to do with past accomplishments, titles, or positions. It has everything to do with a faithfulness to the Lord, constant, persistent endeavor after a deeper walk with Him. I want to finish like I began. I don't want to rest on my laurels. I don't have the moral temptations I might have had when I was 19, 20, or 21 years old. I don't battle with some of the things I used to battle with then, and I haven't battled with them at all. Those Perizzites, Jebusites, and Sinites got out of my life pretty quick.

In fact, I got to a point where the outward battles of my life ended pretty quickly. I've shared the story many times in jest, but when I got saved, I had no teaching at all. I had no pastor, really. And I just read my Bible. I saw all these certain sins in my life that I was doing. I had about six of them. Now all I had to do was get rid of those six sins and I was good. And so I did. I got rid of those six sins. Then I could be an official Pharisee and start judging people after that because they didn't get rid of those six sins. I got rid of those six sins and I felt pretty good about myself. I thought, "Hey, yeah, I beat this. I beat that. I don't swear. I don't drink. I'm done. I'm good."

Then the Holy Spirit started shining His light in my soul through the Hebrews 4:12 principle. He started showing me the stuff in my own heart. It was like, "Oh, this is so much more horrible than the other stuff." I remember going to Bible college classes with my friends and being really happy because the message seemed to apply to them more than it did to me. And then we'd elbow each other leaving, "Hey, that got you this morning, didn't it?" We were really happy when somebody else got fried because we were getting fried every day, finding all this current stuff going on in our soul.

So the question is, right now, in this day, what's happening between me and God today? Today. 30 years later, three months later, walking with Him. What's happening between me and God today? What's happening in the private place of my heart and mind? Where's the struggle for the land? "God, give me, give me, give me, give me." But God says, "You haven't conquered what I already gave you. You want more before you finished what I already gave you. You haven't really realized that. You haven't realized the majesty of grace. You haven't seen mercy like I want you to see mercy yet. You haven't depended on me for the sustenance of your life. I want you to conquer the land I already gave you. Why do you want more land? You haven't figured this land out yet."

And that's the principle we want to pull out of here. For many, the searchlight of God's Word will disclose to us that the enemy is deeply entrenched in my soul. Say that, the searchlight of the Word of God. If you don't open it, there's no light. If you don't reflect on it, there's no light. If you don't meditate on it, think about it, hide it in your heart, there's no light. But take this book, meditate over it, think about it, memorize it just long enough to forget it. It's okay. And let the Word of God be a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of your heart. You'll never stop growing. May the Spirit of God point out to us, to me, that maybe I really haven't conquered the land that God had originally given me to conquer.

I had the heart for ministry right away when I got saved. God had me prepared for over a decade before He used the giftedness. I was gifted a certain way, but I didn't go from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to the pulpit. I was trained. I was disciplined. I learned disciplines in my life. Things had to be worked out of my life. And then when it was time for God to use my gift, it just happened. That's just how it worked for me. I was working at a local church, like many of us here, and one night the pastor got up on a Wednesday night and quit. Sunday morning, they voted and said, "We're making you the pastor." There were about this many people there that night. And it started. I didn't make it happen, didn't force it to happen, didn't manipulate it to happen, didn't maneuver things behind the scene to happen. I just showed up. And when it was time to use the gift, God used it.

As God speaks to us today, do you not see the real trouble in my life may not be the scope of my gifts, but I'm not really living in the capacity where I'm at? In more real terms, Satan and the flesh are still sharing land with me. I was driving to the office yesterday and I saw this little dog. I don't know what type it was. It was not as nice as my dog, if I have a dog. And this dog was walking. It wasn't a real big dog, wasn't a type of dog that could pull you, but the dog was just walking, just straining, and the person was pulling back on the leash. You could tell, how could the dog even breathe? It was just going down the street because the collar was strangling it.

But it wasn't the owner's fault. The dog wouldn't walk at a normal pace. He just kept pushing and pulling at the leash. I was thinking, "What a stupid dog. The thing can't even breathe. If it just would walk a half a step slower, it could breathe." But this dog wanted to sniff something so bad, whatever it was, it's hacking and wheezing all the way down the street because it's strangling itself. That's how we are sometimes with God. We're just pulling on the leash all the time. "I want, I want, I need, I need, how come I didn't get it?" And we are hacking and I say, "I need it." And God says, "Just slow down. I'll get you home, don't worry. Just slow down and let me do in your life what I want to do."

"I don't want you to do that yet because you haven't done this yet. You haven't resolved these issues in your life. How can I use you this way to resolve this issue and this issue and this issue over here? Quit pulling on my leash." Because you know what? I don't let go. And you can pull and pull and you can hack and you can wheeze and you can choke and you can cough. You can almost strangle yourself all you want, but I ain't letting go of the leash until you resolve these issues back here. Resolve these things. Get these people out of the way, these Sinites and these Perizzites and these Canaanites. Get those people out of your land. Take what I've given you already. Own that.

And again, I want to refresh your mind on some of these things. We've been drawing, hopefully consistently, a parallel between the Book of Joshua and the Book of Ephesians throughout the beginning of this series. The Ephesian life is the Promised Land being our finished work, exchanged life walk that we have with God. The newness of the Gospel, that's how we look at the Promised Land in the Book of Ephesians. And we're paralleling that. The Jordan River being the cross, going across the Jordan into the Promised Land. We go through the cross into this new elevated life, this new place of spiritual blessings that the Gospel has given every one of us believers. So we understand that. I want to encompass, or I should say conquer, this land of blessing that God has given me. Whatever that is.

And by the way, some of that, we've been talking about two types of grace. Some of that's proportional in the sense like He's going to give me grace for the gift that He wants me to perform in my life, but some of that's preventative. Grace He just wants to give me so I can live my life in a manner pleasing to Him. Some of us want proportional grace before we get the preventative grace down. We need preventative grace before we can really enter into the depths of the proportional grace that God wants us to have. I have these gifts, but God needs these gifts to come under His control. Many mature believers who live moral, outwardly godly lives have never owned the deep things of their souls. So they never achieve total victory.