SECOND SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/10/2012
10:51:08 PM
This Spiritual Diary will be a bit
different than the others that I have been doing in that what I am about to
write is something that I have thought about off and on for a very long period
of time. I am not sure exactly when the
idea for this post came to me, but one thing I know is that what I am about to
write has had a great deal of meaning to me over the years. I suppose that this first came to me when I
was studying the Old Testament book of Joshua.
The message begins from the book of
Joshua and it has to do with some of the failures that the children of Israel did
after conquering the Promised Land. The
background actually comes from the book of Genesis when God first told Abram
that there would come a day when his offspring would live in the land that he
was living in, which was what became known as the Promised Land. After Moses, by the power of God, brought the
children of Israel out of Egypt, in fulfillment of what God had told Abram in
Genesis chapter fifteen, they came to Mt. Sinai where God gave the Law to Moses
to pass on to the children of Israel, but when Moses came down from the mountain
the children of Israel were sinning greatly and so Moses throws down the
tablets that had the Ten Commandments on them and eventually many of the
children of Israel were killed because of their sin. There were many incidents like this as Moses
led the children of Israel through the wilderness. There came a time when the children of Israel
were to cross over into the Promised Land, but they desired to send out spies
to go and spy out the land to see who lived there and whether or not they would
be able to conquer them. You have to
read this account from the book of Deuteronomy in order to find out this fact
for you won’t see in from reading the book of Numbers. Ten of the spies came back with a bad report
or should I say a report that lacked faith, for God had told them through Moses
that Israel would be able to conquer the people living in the Promised
Land. The result of this report was that
God would have the people of Israel march around the wilderness for forty
years, a year for every day that the spies were in the land. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb gave a
good report, a report of faith in God to do what he said He would do and so God
said that these two would be able to enter the Promised Land, and as it turns
out they were the only two people who entered the Promised land that were over
20 years old at the time the Lord gave this judgment on Israel. Not even Moses was allowed to enter the
Promised Land because of sin he committed later on. Now we have the background we can move
forward to the instructions that God would give to Joshua, who was now leading
the nation of Israel.
When Israel crossed over the Jordan
River at flood stage on dry land they were near the city of Jericho, which
would be the first peoples that they would conquer. Next they would try and conquer AI, but
because of pride and because of the sin of Achan the plans to conquer the
Promised Land came to a temporary halt.
Eventually after about seven years the Promised Land was conquered, thus
fulfilling the promise that God made to Abram in chapter fifteen of
Genesis. What we have to remember is
that not all of the land was conquered, for there were still many enemies that
were left in the land, as Joshua and the army of Israel did not conquer all the
peoples that lived in the land, but God told him that if they would kill all of
these people then the land would be run over by wild animals, so God wanted to
have the children of Israel to have faith in Him to receive the power from Him
to slowly but surely conquer all of these sinful people. If Israel would not listen to the Lord and
trust Him then these enemies would become a snare to the children of Israel
because they worshiped idols and would cause the children of Israel to begin to
forget the Lord and begin to worship Idols.
In order for me to make the point
that I want to make I have to write about my testimony, how I came to know the
Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord, which happened on the 26th
of January, 1974 while visiting a friend in Florida. When I was about ten years old I went fishing
with a few of my friends and these friends were probably two years older than me,
and when you are ten years old two years makes a great deal of difference. At any rate I begin to swear, to use the
Lords name in vain, and this was to kind of show off in front of these older
friends. I have to now fast forward to
1966 when I was drafted into the U. S. Army, it was July 5, 1966 that I was
inducted into the army and I did not like it one bit. I began to pray to God to get me out of the
army and if He answered this “fox hole” prayer then I would quit my
swearing. Well it took three days for
the Lord to answer this prayer and so I had to keep up my part of the bargain. I did for at least two weeks, and then I was
right back at the swearing as if the deal was all forgotten by me. Now we have to fast forward to January of
1974 the time when the Lord saved me.
One of the ways that I knew that the Lord had changed me was that when
He saved me He took away my swearing mouth, He took away the desire of swearing
from me. God had not forgotten the
bargain that I had made with Him. What
does that have to do with all of this that happened to Israel after they had
conquered the majority of the land? Well
when I became a believer the Lord forgave me of all of my sins, past, present
and future, and He took away my desire to swear, but just like the children of
Israel He allowed enemies to remain, enemies that the Bible describes as the
world, the flesh, and the devil. These
enemies desire to cause me to stumble, to sin just like the enemies of Israel. Now when we look at a man called Caleb, one
of the two men who were from that first generation, he was 85 years old and
Caleb conquered, by faith, the enemies that were in the land that was promised
to him by God. Caleb had great faith,
and it takes great faith for believers to conquer the enemies that all
believers have. I can tell you that
there are some different sins that I wish the Lord would have taken away from
me in addition to swearing, but I believe that the Lord did not do this so that
I would grow in my walk with Him. I
mentioned in a recant SD about 1 Cor. 10:13, “There hath no temptation taken
you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you
to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a
way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (AV) I mentioned that the Greek word for
temptation can also mean testing, and that the Lord tests us, but Satan tempts
us. Here is another thing that when I
first learned about it surprised me, but not as much now, and that is that a
believer can earn the same crown for resisting temptation as a believer who
dies for the cause of Christ, so temptation is a difficult then to overcome,
and cannot be done without the power of God’s Word, and God’s Spirit and the
use of God’s Spiritual Armor.
In conclusion I want to say that
not all people are tempted by the same temptation, for we all have our
weaknesses, and it is good to remember that Satan knows what these are. Think about the weakness that you have, for I
know the ones that I have, and when it is hard to hang on it is good to know a
verse from the Bible that will counteract the temptation that you have, and
just as Jesus resisted the devil in the wilderness by quoting Scripture so we
can do the same.
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