Past Memories and Present Promises

Joshua 1:5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. 6 Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them.

Israel had been at this place before, ready to cross over and conquer the land of Canaan. Ready to enter into the land promised them by God, a land flowing with milk and honey. They had been there and they had failed. When it came time to cross over and conquer they would not trust God and they would not forget Egypt and so they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. They wandered and they watched while they slowly died marching in circles just outside the promises of God.

Have you ever felt like that? Like you are just outside the best that God has for you but are prevented from obtaining it and so you just keep marching in circles waiting for death. I think many churches are marching in circles just biding time until death puts a padlock on the door. They can be doing a lot while they’re marching in circles but they never experience God or His richest blessings.

We often fail because we can’t forget the past and see the promises of the present. The Israelites wanted to go back because they thought it was too difficult. They even wanted to stone Moses and Aaron because they felt they were to blame for their problems. They remembered the food and the shelter but not the slavery and pain. We look back to the past, the way things used to be and say, “If we could only do that again everything would be ok.” And as long as we stay with our heart set on the past we will never experience the blessing of God in the present.

I spoke with a church member once who was determined to leave the church. They spoke of never having done that, they spoke of what used to happen and what used to be. I listened in sadness and then told them, “You can’t go back. Even if you could call those same pastors back this isn’t the same church and they are not the same pastors.” But all they could see was the past of their memory. They missed the promise of the future because all they could see were phantoms of the past.