Just on the borders of the promised land, Israel stumbled. Here’s the story—fitting insights for a communion service.

<p>Just on the borders of the promised land, Israel stumbled. Here’s the story—fitting insights for a communion service.</p>

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FAST Missions

Daniel Vis

The Promise Land

Father in heaven, I know the angels in heaven are rejoicing today.

We wanna linger in your presence, Lord, and take a few moments to study your words, to look at the story of Joshua and glean lessons from it that can help us because we are living in a critical time in Earth's history today.

Brother Chuck mentioned that we're living in difficult times.

We need to be able to go into the promised land ourselves and take conquest for the kingdom.

So please, Lord, we're praying that you would bless our study this morning.

Send the Holy Spirit, make everything simple and clear.

God, my words, I pray we ask this in Jesus' name.

Now there's a song that goes, "'Like a mighty army moves the church of God." Have you ever heard that?

Heard someone say it's more like a glacier than church moves.

It feels like we're just growing so slow.

I mean, not just the fact that change takes place slowly, but growth takes place slowly in our church.

Sometimes We might have decent attendance.

We might have all kinds of good programs and a lot of good things happening.

It's sometimes it just feels like growth is almost imperceptible.

It's like slow, so slow, we just hardly notice.

Few people come in, a few people leave, and yeah, it's about the same.

Maybe we have a high Sabbath, but then we have a low Sabbath.

Yeah, some transfers, yeah, we have some visitors, and we're thankful for all of that, but I mean, real growth in our church.

Like a glacier sometimes moves the church of God.

Of course, it's not supposed to be that way.

We should be like a mighty army, like Joshua and the children of Israel.

That's really the whole point of the book of Joshua.

If you have your Bibles, I encourage you to turn there to Joshua chapter 1.

We're not going to go very far but into Joshua 1, but at least we'll look at a few verses there in the first chapter.

Joshua chapter 1, Great army going in, conquering the promised land.

You know, I think back on my life, and I think I spent a lot of time just wandering around.

Many years I was an itinerant preacher, just wandering off from place to place.

And then the last 6 years, particularly, I was there in North Dakota, just wandering around, like, what am I doing here in the middle of nowhere?

And Joshua had been wandering around the wilderness for 40 years.

He was probably about 60 years old, or maybe a little older when he went, at this point we're breeding now, that's how old I am, just about.

And so I can kind of relate to Joshua and all of a sudden there's this message it's time to go in to the promised land this is the moment this is the time the message comes from God it's time to go take the land.

And I believe that here at this point in time, been here for a year and a half, we've been planning together as a church, we've been laying plans and strategies, putting together calendars and timetables, and this is the time, It's come around finally that we're about ready to launch out with our Evangelistic Campaign or Prophecy Series and we're gonna pray for souls.

God has called us to this moment in history.

Anyway, it's interesting how the chapter begins.

We'll just look at Joshua chapter 1, starting with verse 1.

The Bible says, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses, my servant is dead.

Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel.

Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.

From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even to the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun shall be your coast.

He said, I'm giving it to you, the whole children of Israel.

I'm giving it to the whole people of God.

All of New Albany, all of Charlestown, all of Jeffersonville, Salisbury, Cordon, Georgetown, going to give it all to you.

All the areas around all the little country locations, you know, where maybe we don't have big cities.

Everywhere you put the sole of your feet, it's gonna be yours.

Bible says, Then Joshua commanded the officers of the people saying, Pass through the host, command the people saying, Prepare your victuals, for within 3 days you shall pass over this Jordan to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God gives you to possess it." He passes on the instruction to the people.

In 3 days, we're going to go over to the river and we're gonna take the promised land.

20 days, October 10 is the first meeting, that's a Friday night, that's just a little under 3 weeks from now.

All our energies between now and then need to be harnessed.

We're gonna pull everything together, pull out all the stops, do everything we can to make this work.

This is why we're having a week of prayer this week.

We get together and we can pray together for 1 another for our church.

And for these meetings, we need to pray God's not going to work unless we ask him to work.

But I'm so glad that we have communion Sabbath next week.

This is a chance for us to search our hearts, make sure there's not anything between us and God that might hinder him from working.

Next week, I was hoping to have him today, but we don't have him, but next week, next Sabbath, we'll have 1000 beautiful, full-color glossy flyers, and we're gonna need to get those out.

So I would encourage you to plan on taking a few.

So I only get about 10 each, but take plan on taking a few start thinking about you can give those to even now.

And we have a lot to do to get organized.

We need to work on some of the programming details.

We need people to sign up for that and step up for that.

There's a lot of things that need to be done between now and then.

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The Promise Land

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