Are You Shrinking Back, Or Taking the Land?

Ever wake one day and something you treasured deeply was gone…just gone?

 My ninety-year-old great-aunt bought property in Florida, decades ago.  She lived where it was open, remote, free.  But before long, she heard reports of a “bad community of people” living deep behind the woods that lined her property.

At night their thumping music echoed through the trees, and occasionally she saw a car filled with people partying, zip through her quiet community.

But, as the years passed, slowly, trees began to get cut down.  The amount of cars flying around her house increased.  She heard of robberies, and slowly fear creaped in until where my great-aunt lived, wasn’t safe.

While my sweet aunt loved birds, and gardening, and serving in the church…the stories of these “neighbors” eventually terrifying her enough to where she wouldn’t go outside.

And isn’t our culture vulnerable to isolation due to technology and fear keeping us at “arms distance” from other people? Didn’t God call us to possess the land, not shrink back from the darkness creeping into this territory God has give us?

O.k. so maybe you don’t own twenty acres.  But I am sure, without a doubt, you own something.  Maybe you have a godly marriage, well-behaved kids, a great job, or a place you serve others diligently.  Well, that is your God-given territory.

Yet, how many times do distractions and a lack of connecting with other Christians rob us from all God intended for us to possess?

And I get that God is far above all principalities, powers, and rulers of this dark world, and “greater is He who is in us, than He who is in this world.” Yet, scripture also instructs us, “Be Alert, the enemy prowls around like a lion seeking to destroy all He may.”

And are we looking for blatant, out-in-the-open monsters….when the enemy, like a lion, more often sneaks up and and hides behind the thicket of our cirucmstances, behind the bushes of our thoughts, or in the corners of our families? 

But could it be because we are busy, distracted, preoccupied with life…we don’t even notice the “taking of land” in our lives?

One of my prayers lately has been, “Lord, increase the territory of my influence.  Expand my tent stakes.”  I don’t know about you, but I am tired of the enemy devouring what has been mine in Christ from the beginning of the earth.

There have been seasons early on in life, that I not only sat by and let the enemy rob, steal, and destroy me…but where I have actually taken the bate, befriended, and tried to cuddle up with the one who wanted to destroy me.

Well, no more my friends!  We are not fresh meat who wait for the enemy of our souls to take what if rightfully ours, from us.  We are conquerors, children of God, men and women of God who battle through prayer, for the victories of the Lord in our lives.

Like Joshua and Caleb, we are meant to spy out the territory and come back in faith to rob from darkness….not the other way around.

We are David’s who slay Golaiath.  Gideon’s who battle though it may seem impossible that we might win because our numbers aren’t many.

Today friends, will you do a few things with me?  Will you slow down?  Will you be alert to the things the enemy may be trying to take from your life?

Second, would you pray fervently?  Coming out of isolation and gathering around people who not only pray, but actually rise up in faith and believe that we weren’t called to be victims in a day that the enemy is having a hay day with the lives of far too many Christians?

My aunt eventually had to move out from her home in Florida.  A place she had lived and loved for decades.  When she left she was nothing short of terrified.

Oh friends, let’s not be like her.  Let’s rise up today in faith.

• Faith that takes land.
• Faith that binds up our enemies.
• Faith that does good works for the name of Jesus.
• Faith that doesn’t just “talk faith” but actually rises up and lives a life of love like God intended.  
• Faith that is the same power that raise Jesus from the dead.  
• Faith that listens to our Father and obediently does what He says.  
• Faith that doesn’t tremble at the enemy and his schemes.  
• Faith that hungers for His fruition, His fruits of righteousness.
• Faith that doesn’t shrink back, but presses in to take the land.

How have you given up or neglected lately what God has given you?  How might you seek Christian fellowship to help support you in your faith-journey today?  How do you need to slow down, and listen for what’s going in your life, spiritually? 

Remember, the spirit of the same Christ who healed the sick, restored the blind, delivered the prostitutes and spoke life into other people lives in US! We are not victims who shrink back, but daughter’s and son’s of the one and only God, the one who is sovereign and holds dominion over all that might stop us from “taking the land”. 

(Linking with Barbie)