You might have heard in your life that if you believe in God, He will reward you. Or in fancier terms, we will find our “Promised Land”. Like in the Old Testament, God promised to the Israelites that they will find the promised land God had promised years before. Of course, many things happened before they finally reached it, but that’s a story for another day. Now, what is a promised land exactly? Well it could be many things. Restoration from your past, a relationship, or even a renewed health. You name it. What the modern world thinks of as the promised land is a time in your life where you have been saved completely from something, based off of the fact that He has performed a miracle. Think of it like this: After Adam and Eve sinned, humanity became sinful for the very first time, making us slaves of the satan, and evil rulers. We could not have a relationship with God because God cannot see, or even be near sin. Passages in the Bible have God promising humanity that there will one day come a savior to save all of us from satan, and going to hell. From the beginning of time all the way to nearly 27AD, people were hopeless. Until the promise was finally fulfilled through Jesus. Jesus lived, died, was buried and rose again to reconciled us back to God, so now we can worship Him wherever we want, and as long as we believe in Him, live like Him, and confess to Him that we are sinners and need Him, we can live for eternity. This is the promised land of the Bible. So, can the same happen to us in our individual situations? Well of course! Did God deliver us back then? Did He fulfill His promise? He did, so He can. But what if… …He doesn’t? What if He doesn’t deliver us from our sin? What if He doesn’t restore us? Sometimes He doesn’t. The apostle Paul in the New Testament, he wrote half the New Testament, which were mostly letters to churches. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and taught the churches many things… …in jail. Yeah, the letters he wrote were written in jail. He definitely wasn’t in his physical earthly promised land, but he was ok with it. As long as he was able to preach the Gospel, he was fine with whatever God let him go through. He was faithful to the One who saved him. So let me ask you this question… If God doesn’t, will you still follow Him? If God doesn’t restore you in the way you want Him too, will you still follow Him? If God doesn’t do what you want Him to do, will you still follow Him? It’s not that He doesn’t love you, because he already died for you. Maybe through the heartache, we can find joy. And that joy is the joy of Jesus Christ. So if we live miserable lives, why can’t we just end it all now, so we can be happy in eternity? Why should we live a miserable life now, then be happy in a very long time when we could just… be happy now? Why do we live here? Many reasons, but mainly one. Eternal life doesn’t come when we die, it comes when we ask Jesus to come into our heart. We will still face many demons, believing in Him doesn’t mean they die. That’s the difference between this world and the world to come. There’ll be no more suffering soon, but meanwhile, we can live like He did and make disciples. We can run wild, risk everything, and lay it all on the line. We are free to struggle, but we’re not struggling to be free.
Credit to tobyMac who inspired this with his song “Promised Land”.
