Our flesh, too, may tell us all kinds of negative things when the goals we have set for ourselves are hard to reach: "I'm tired! I'm weary! I can't do anything! I'm stupid!" But the Word says the Spirit brings life! Your flesh won't profit or speak the right things to you but the Spirit will (John 6:63).
The Israelites made it through the wilderness. They'd been through the Red Sea experience and they had sent 12 spies into the Promised Land. Ten of the spies came back with a report of unbelief. With the words of their mouths, they parked by death and denied the life-giving power of the Word of God.
They denied the Word. Consequently, they never entered into the Promised Land. They died in the wilderness.
| It is not your natural limitation that stops God, it is your unbelief in His supernatural ability that hinders Him. - Marilyn Hickey |
Watch Where You Stop
It is vital that you do not park by unbelief, or be around people who speak unbelief. Some people whine and cry and have nothing but negative things to say. If you stop and consider unbelief long enough, you'll end up saying the same things.
Park yourself, rather, by people who are speaking the Word and are anointed by the Holy Spirit.
In Deuteronomy, Moses told the Israelites, through the command of God, that their parking meter had expired. It was time for them to move ahead:
The LORD our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying, Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount: turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto&Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers&.God wanted them to possess what He had promised them. He said, "See this Promised Land? I'm going to give you all of this land. Don't stay by this mountain any longer."
(Deut. 1:6-8)
Get Your Life In Gear And Move On
If you recall, the Israelites kept parking in the same place in the wilderness. "Oh, we were here last month!" one of them said. "Oh, yeah! I remember that tree over there! I remember that bush. And this is where one of our cattle died."
They just kept parking in the same areas. They could have been in the Promised Land but they had refused it because they refused the Word. They had denied the power of the Holy Spirit to take them into it. They thought they couldn't do it because they were looking at their own natural limitations.
But it is not your natural limitation that stops God, it is your unbelief in His supernatural ability that hinders Him. However, God doesn't want you to park on your limitations any longer. He wants you to get in gear and move forward with Him and His Word.
The next generation of the Israelites were ready to switch gears and move on into "drive" so they could go over and possess the Promised Land. And God supernaturally gave them the land!
The first city the Israelites defeated was Jericho, and it wasn't a natural battle. They didn't go in there and say, "we are going to knock those walls down." God instructed them to march once around the walls for six days, and seven times on the seventh day. If you do what God wants you to do supernaturally, then you'll get what God has for you!
But if you are going to park on your own limitations, doing things according to your own reasoning, then it is not going to work. You are going to have to go forward in the power of the Word and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, doing what He tells you to do.
Quickened By The Holy Spirit
When God promised the Israelites that He was going to give them the Promised Land, that was His life-giving Word. He had already quickened the Israelites by the Holy Spirit because Scripture says when they left Egypt there wasn't one sick or feeble person among them. Even the older people were not feeble because they had been quickened by the Holy Spirit. In Exodus we're told that the pillar of cloud that led them was the Holy Spirit.
Imagine the supernatural deliverances they had already had from the 10 plagues. When everyone else's children were dying, theirs were living because they believed the word from God given to them through Moses. By faith, they had taken hold of the Word of life and followed His instructions.
If you want to know where life is, it is in your Bible. But it won't do you any good sitting on the coffee table or on your nightstand.
The Word has to be in your heart. When you believe the Word with your heart and confess it with your mouth, it not only becomes life to you, but it begins to slay the giants in your life by the power that is in the Word of God as we speak it out.
Excerpt permission granted by Marilyn Hickey Publications