You know – when we’re travelling through one of life’s dark patches, it’s so easy for someone else to say – “Well, just take the problem to God.” But there’s only one way to find out if that’s good advice. Suck it and see.

Over these last few days on the program we've been looking at those dark patches in life, those times that we all travel through that we'd rather not and we've been sharing in some of the experiences of King David who had more than his share of dark times in life and as he writes about that in Psalm 34, looking back on what he's leaned in those times, he makes this simple yet profound statement:

I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.

And maybe, maybe you've been travelling through one of those dark times and you hear what David has to say and perhaps you've heard the little that I've shared of my own darkness’s and you think to yourself, "Well that's okay for someone like David or for that guy on the radio. Maybe God would show up for them but I don't think this stuff is for me." Well here’s the rub; unless we seek we never find out whether it is or not and so today I want to share a very specific invitation from God, an invitation that is seriously for you.

This week on the program we've been looking at some of the debilitating darkness’s we travel through in life, you know those really tough times when we're hurting or we've lost something or someone’s hurt us. You know those dark times in life and we've discovered that God is very much in the "light" business, He's in the business of shining His light into our darkness's, taking our fear and replacing it with His radiance. Perhaps that’s why King David writes – it's in Psalm 18, verse 28:

It is you O Lord who lights my lamp. The Lord my God lights up my darkness.

And again in Psalm 139, verses 11 and 12. He writes:

If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me', even the darkness will not be dark to you O God. The night will shine like day for darkness is as light to you.

See, you get this impression that David is an incredibly seasoned traveller through the darkness's of life and we know that he spent years on the run from King Saul who was trying to kill him, we know that David went through so many wars and battles where he could have died and where he would have been afraid and the people grumbled and sometimes turned against him.

He's been through dark places and then some and he's learned some stuff that God would have us learn, each in our own way because you're not David, I'm not David. So let’s head back to this psalm that we've been looking at, Psalm 34, verses 7 and 8 just to see what it is that David learned. This is what he writes, he says:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

Now there are two things in here that we need to get into. The first is that bit about the angel of the Lord, look at verse 7 again:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them.

Angels have a bit of a funny symbology these days in our society, we stick them on our cards and they're fluffy little creatures with wings but you just take a short study of the angels that God describes in the Bible and what you discover is they are a fearsome lot.

Often God uses them as messengers and He sends them to talk to someone and invariably when an angel confronts a person the very first thing they say is, "Don't be afraid." And then they deliver a specific message to Gods people to protect them from trouble and often they appear as fearsome beings to protect Gods people. I'm going to read you a little passage from 2 Chronicles chapter 32, verse 20. It says this:

King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz cried out in prayer to heaven about this and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the leaders and the officers in the camp of the Assyrian king. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace and he went to the temple of his god and some of his sons cut him down with a sword.

See, get it? This angel equals serious protection. You see presidents and prime ministers and kings and queens, they get around with their bullet proof glass cars and they're security contingents. They got nothing on an angel of the Lord and you might say, "Berni, do you seriously believe in angels?" Absolutely! We can't see them but when we fear God, when we reverence Him and we belong to Him, He sends His angels, listen to what David says:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him.

He sends His angels literally to lay siege around us to protect us. How does David know that? Because he's experienced it and that’s exactly what he says in the next verse. He says:

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

This is an often quoted scripture and often out of context, this "taste and see", "suck it and see" scripture. When you're in the darkness, when you're afraid try this thing, this thing that David is talking about. It's like an invitation to you and me from God today. For goodness sake taste and see that the Lord is good. You can stand back in your darkness and say, "Well you know I just don't believe that God’s going to do anything for me."

David said, "I turned to the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all his fears and now He is giving us the invitation of God." Go on, taste and see for yourself that the Lord is good. You will be blessed when you take refuge in Him. "Come on try it!" I can hear the spirit of God saying through His word today. "Come on try it because when you take refuge in Me you will be blessed", is what God's saying.

I don't know about you but God has seriously spoken to me and I encourage you to take Him at His word today. He is in the light business and it's something that David discovered through long hard experiences in darkness. You know the last thing we want to do is to turn to God. “Taste and see that the Lord is good”, He is in the light business and David knew that and David travelled through dark times and he cried out to God and God always delivered him and that’s why he comes out the other side of that singing Gods praises specifically for you and me to hear.

I will bless the Lord at all times (he sings), His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in God; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Come and glorify God with me; let’s exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. When we look on Him our faces are radiant; never covered in shame.

This poor man called and the Lord heard Him and He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. (Come on) Taste and see that the Lord is good for blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him."

I want to encourage you to join me in taking God at His word. If you're going through a dark time at the moment, cry out to God, go and see Him and He will answer and maybe one day you'll be travelling through a dark time and the Holy Spirit will just remind you of what you heard today. You see it's no coincidence that you and I are together today. When He does, follow that call, open your heart.

I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.

Mostly – we think of fear as being a bad thing.  And often it is.  But it’s also a protection mechanism.  And “good fear” if I can call it that – helps us to make good choices. So – exactly how does that work?

Fear is a funny thing, mostly we think of it as a negative thing. None of us wants to be afraid, I mean who wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, "Gee, I hope I get to be afraid today?" No, fear is something we don't look forward to but fear is one of those funny emotions that also helps to protect us.

We've all seen a little child who will chase a football out onto the street without any sense of the fear about what might happen if a car or a truck or a bus happened to want to occupy that very same piece of real estate just at the time that they're there.

An adult on the other hand has learned a healthy fear of that and so we hopefully would have a good look before we ran out onto the street. Well that makes sense, the same is true when, of most things that are dangerous, an adult has a healthy sense of fear. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be a respect for the consequences and so that acts, in effect, as a protection mechanism. So as it turns out there is a right and good sense of fear in life, so how does that apply to our relationship with God?

This week on the program we're taking a bit of a look at the dark times we travel through in life sometimes and we've all had them. Sadness, loss, pain, you can look back and say, "Yep! That was one of those dark times." Maybe you're even in one of those times at the moment and we've spent some time with a man, King David of Israel that had more than his fair share of those dark times and I guess because he was a man with a close relationship to God, he learns some things about God and about that relationship in those dark times.

He shares a bit of that in Psalm 34 which we're having a bit of a poke around this week. Psalm 34 is written with the benefit of hindsight, looking back at some dark times, the fearful times and rejoicing because what David discovers is that God was faithful to him in those difficult times, hopefully that sets a bit of the scene. Now let me read to you the first bit of the psalm right now, Psalm 34 beginning at verse 1:

I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me, lets exalt His name together because I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered in shame.

This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

Today I want to take a bit of a look at this fear element. It's a word that David uses twice in that short passage. Now I hate being afraid, I'm sure you're the same. I remember when I was in the army and we would be repelling out of helicopters or going over high things on obstacle courses. I have a fear of heights, I just don't like them, I had the opportunity to go parachuting once, I said, "you've got to be kidding me! I am not jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane." And as I said the other day, fear is what happens in those dark times too.

In a broken marriage there’s a fear of the future, there's a financial fear. In retrenchment there’s a fear, will I ever get another job and we can lose hope? Fear is a big part of that, it kind of, well it immobilises us and obviously the times that David had been through he'd experienced that same fear that you and I do. Psalm 34, verse 4:

I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears.

In a sense that fear is a bad fear, that's the fear that God wants to deliver us from. We talked about that yesterday on the program and I can't tell you the number of times that, that I've been immobilised by that sort of fear and I've gone to God and just cried out to Him and He fills me with a peace that defies any human comprehension.

Now I'm not someone who naturally gets afraid, I'm a fairly positive person 99.9% of the time but we all need God in those dark places with us to deliver us from that sort of fear but it's the other mention of fear in this little passage that I'd like to spend a few moments focusing on.

You see this is one of the good fears that I was talking about at the beginning of our time together today. It's in verse 7 of Psalm 34, it says:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him.

You see, this is talking about the fear of God. Now it's easy to see this as one of those bad fears, "oh God is just this old grumpy old man with a big stick and a bunch of rules and old fashioned rule based religion. They start talking to me about the fear of God, see I knew I didn't need that sort of religion in my life," but that's not what it means. The fear of God or the fear of the Lord is quite different. Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7 says:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge but fools despise wisdom and discipline.

See the word fear means two things, the first is the obvious meaning, 'to be petrified; to be afraid' it's the meaning we know well, terror. The second, the second is respect and reverence. You see my Dad when I was growing up, I had both of those fears for him. I knew that if I did something really bad, when he came home from work I'd get a belting. There were consequences.

Now that's just the way it was but at the same time I respected him and he's passed away now but as I look back my greatest emotion is that one of respect and yes he did punish me sometimes and that's what happened but I didn't wander around all day in terror, it was a sense, a healthy sense of respect and knowing that if I crossed him, there were consequences and it's the same with God.

That's what the fear of the Lord means. You know something; if you and I reject God, if we spend the rest of our lives walking against him, one day there will be a day of judgement and one day there will be hell to pay for that. That's that kind of fear but the other part of that fear is to have respect and a reverence, a right view of God. Yes He is my friend and He is my saviour but He's also a God who's powerful and mighty and awesome and sovereign.

Love and respect go together and when we have that right relationship with Him, when we get Him in His rightful place in our lives something starts to happen. This is what David says in Psalm 34:

God delivers us from our fears; He protects us.

And Solomon in Proverbs chapter 1 that I just read before, He gives us wisdom:

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him.

God protects us when we honour Him, when we respect Him and I want to encourage you to do something. In the dark times we travel through sometimes we just get tempted to behave badly. Sometimes we just say, "well God's not in that place and I'm just going to walk my other way", I want to encourage you in your dark time to fear God for "the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him."

And you know something; He delivers them.

When life is really tough and when you’ve lost hope and you’re afraid – you can either lie there, completely immobilised – or you can take a really simple, obvious step. Question is – in which direction?

We all have choices in life. Sometimes we make good choices, more often than not those good choices have good outcomes and we can all look back and see some of the bad choices we've made and the consequences of those choices but you know the hardest choices to make are the ones we make in the dark. You know, in those dark times, the difficult times, the times when we're hurting so bad that our sense of balance and right and wrong and up and down is all out of kilter.

The whole thing about that sort of darkness is that we can't see forward, we can't see back and it's such a difficult place to be. Well today, today we're going to look at a choice that we can make in those dark times that is always the right choice. When everything else has failed, when we don't quite know which way to turn, when even the good choices we made before now don't seem to hold any promise, there's one choice that we can make that always, always pays off.

To look at that choice we're going to spend some time over the coming days with a man who had more of those dark times than most of us and he wrote a lot about it. The one place we're going to go is to take a look at what he learned and he records that in Psalm 34. It's an interesting psalm, it comes out of King David’s life and it's his praise for deliverance from a time of trouble. So it's a psalm written, if you like, with the benefit of hindsight.

David's been in a tough dark place and his learned something, he's learned something about God in a dark time. Now we're not quite sure when that time was, the introduction to the psalm says:

A psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away.

Now we don't have any other historical information about that situation. Abimelech was a judge, a leader of Israel, Gideon’s son.

The fact that we don't have the exact historical details however doesn't really matter. The fact that David had to engage in this deception tells us that it was a fearful time, it was a scary time, it was a time when he needed to escape. Now let’s have a listen to the first part of this psalm as David reflects on that dark time, it's Psalm 34, verses 1-8. This is what he writes:

I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips, my soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

This poor man called and the Lord heard him, He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see, the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

See David is looking back on some hard times and he starts out by praising God for His faithfulness with the specific purpose of letting the rest of us know that God is faithful in the dark times. With a specific purpose, of us who are afflicted, being able to hear this and rejoice. This psalm was written for you and for me:

My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.

You see David’s saying here, "You know why I'm writing this psalm? It's for you, if you're afflicted, if you're travelling through a dark and fearful time, you know what? Come and look at what God did for me."

Glorify the Lord with me (says David) let us exalt His name together.

In other words, so that you and I can rejoice together in our dark times we're getting the benefit of what David discovered in his darkness, in his fearful times and what he discovered is as profound as it is simple. Look at verse 4:

I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears.

Darkness and fear seem to immobilise us. Fear somehow stops us dead in our tracks, we just kind of sit there and we ache, and fear eats away at our hearts kind of like a quick spreading cancer and in that fear. Remember David was, as he had been many times before, in fear of his life. This was real fear, let me say it this way; deadly fear and in the midst of his deadly fear, he did the thing that he had learned to do over and over and over again all those times in his life when he'd been in danger.

When he was on the run from King Saul for all those years he sought the Lord, he cried out to God, he said, "God, help!" The one thing we can forget to do when we're frozen by fear is to do exactly that, to seek God, to cry out to God and what a surprise; God answered him and delivered him from all his fears.

I don't know about you but I can relate to that, in life and in ministry I come up against giants of opposition all the time and can I tell you, some days they scare me, seriously scare me and we have a choice; we can sit there and tremble in fear, we can be completely immobilised or we can spend time with God crying out to Him in prayer, reading His word, listening to Him and He always delivers me from my fears. David goes on to say this in verses 5 and 6 of that Psalm:

Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him, he saved him out of all his troubles.

There it is, there's that "light" word; radiance:

Those who look to Him are radiant.

The Hebrew word that sits behind our English translation means literally "to beam" or "to burn with light". It's an over the top kind of word, it's not a glow or a flicker or just to shine but to beam and to burn with light.

Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.

See in those dark times we're down cast, we're in a sense ashamed if you like but David states this incredibly simple truth. He said:

This poor man called and the Lord heard me. He saved me out of all my troubles. (He delivered me from all my fears)

This is such a humble and beautiful picture isn't it? David, possibly the greatest king that Israel ever had, saw himself just as some poor man who cried out to God.

Don't you love how the Bible is packed full of this, this real life stuff, this stuff that's right down where we are? The word of God meant for us, here and now right where the rubber hits the road. Light, radiance in our darkness and in our fear and all this out of a simple step that David took, so simple and yet when we fear for our lives, so difficult.

I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.

When you’re travelling through those dark patches in life – as we all do – the most important thing you need to know is that God is in the Light business – and He’s right there in that dark place with you!

You may hear me talk about the stars in the sky from time to time and that’s because they just fascinate me. There are so many and they're so huge and so far away, the universe is utterly incredible. The scientists tell us they estimate that there are at least a trillion, trillion stars, well what does that mean?

Lets just start with a billion, do you know how long it would take to count to a billion, once each second; one, two, three. Well a billion seconds is 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours and 48 minutes. That’s a billion.

Now a trillion is a thousand billion, that means that a trillion seconds is a thousand times as long. That makes a trillion seconds, 31,688 years, 32 days and few hours. Isn't that incredible? And that is just one trillion. Now a trillion times that 31,688 years and 32 days and a few hours which would make it a trillion, trillion, seconds is just an inconceivable length of time isn't it? And I'm just talking humble little ticks of a clock – seconds.

But now look out at the universe and consider there are a trillion, trillion stars out there at least, massive balls of fire and they're just the ones we know about.

You can tell I love astronomy and mathematics can't you, so why this dissertation on astro-physics? Well simply this; this week we're taking a look at the dark patches we can go through in life, the difficult times, the times of depression or fear or loss or loneliness or financial crisis or retrenchment or broken relationships or sickness. That list that is seemingly endless in life and when we go through those darkness’s they are so dark aren't they? If God is God, where is He in those dark times, huh? Exactly where is He?

This series of programs is called, "Dark Night, Bright Light" and today, today I just want to establish that no matter how dark the darkness gets, God is in the "light" business. I'm just going to read you the first 5 verses of the first book of the Bible, Genesis. It's the beginning; this is what it says:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light,” and there was light and God saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day' and the darkness He called 'night' and there was evening and there was morning. That was the first day.

Now I might hear you say, "Well Berni that's well and good; you're talking about physical light here, that's fine but what about God shining His light into the darkness in my life?" We're going to talk about that shortly, the point that I'm making is this; creation tells us something about the Creator.

You and I create different things because we're different. You might be artistic, you might be able to draw or to paint and so given the opportunity to be creative, you'd produce this stunning picture. Ha, I can't draw for peanuts. You might be really good with your hands, maybe building things or maybe crafting things. Well I have ten thumbs when it comes to that. So what we create tells us something about who we are, it's the same deal with God. You look at what He creates and it tells you something about who He is.

In fact it's interesting to look at the order in which He creates, this God, and the first thing He creates, the very first thing is light because it was dark. That tells us something about God but what a light. We just think of the sun but that sun, as I said in the beginning of the program, is just one of an estimated trillion, trillion stars. In the greatest understatement in the Bible Moses writes in Genesis chapter 1, verse 16:

God made two great lights; the greater was to govern the day, the lesser was to govern the night. He also made the stars.

Ha, also made the stars. God is seriously into light and it tells us something about who He is and when you look at Him shining light into our lives there are so many references throughout the Bible about Him wanting to do that. I'm just going to look at 3 very briefly right now. The first is Ezekiel chapter 10 in verse 4:

Then the glory of the Lord rose up from above the cherubim and moved to the threshold of the temple and the cloud filled the temple and the court was full of the radiance of the glory of God.

Isaiah, in chapter 60 verse 19 says:

The sun will no more be your light by day nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you at night for the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory.

And perhaps my favourite of all where Paul seems to bring it all together in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6. He says:

For its the very same God who said "Let light shine out of darkness" that made His light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Can you see why I've called this little series, "Dark Night, Bright Light". Over these coming days I believe we're going to be transformed by Gods word about darkness and light.

I'm going to share with you again from my darkness; you know in life we all have them. Thirteen years ago I had a major one; I lost everything that was dear to me. I guess in life we end up with one or two or three major ones but then we have other smaller ones along the way that don't feel that small when we're going through them. Real pressure at work, it gets us down or interest rates go up and we can't afford our houses anymore and we have to sell.

You know all that stuff. And every time I have been through one of those darkness’s, every time when I've turned to Jesus and poured my heart out to Him, His gentle light has began to glow in my heart. The longer things went on because we have to travel through that stuff, the darker it became out there the more brightly His love and His joy and His peace would shine in my life.

The sun will be no more your light by day nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you by night for the Lord will be your everlasting light and your God will be your glory.

Light is such a wonderful way to describe what happens when we turn to God in our darkness. I can't find any other word to put it than "light"; a warmth and a brilliance and a radiance that shines in our lives. If you've just been through darkness, if you're going through one right now, if you're going to go through one in the future the word of God is going to shine a light into that place. Dark Night, Bright Light.

When you’re travelling through those dark patches in life – what you discover so often is that you’re afraid of the dark. Fear is a big deal in hard times. And each one of us needs to know what to do about it.

We're starting a new series of messages on the program this week, a series that I've called, "Dark Night, Bright Light". I wonder what the word dark or darkness means to you? Darkness has all sorts of connotations when we apply it to our own lives. I remember when I was a young boy, even probably well into my teenage years, I was truly afraid of the dark.

At night after dinner in the dining room in the house where we lived it was what seemed like a long corridor to my bedroom, it was only 8 or 9 metres but when the corridor was dark, I tell you, it was a long scary way and I was afraid to walk from the light dining room into that dark corridor to my dark bedroom.

Now we were blessed because there was a light switch at either end of the corridor, at the dining room end and at the end where my bedroom was and I always, always used that light switch. Now don't get me wrong, we lived in a safe part of town and the house was secure so there was no logical or rational reason to be afraid of the dark, I just was and it was a very real fear.

It seems that darkness and fear often go together in life. Whether we're young or old the truth be known we actually need both, light and dark in this world. I love it when the sun goes down and it's time to go to sleep and again, when the sun comes up in the morning and it's time to get on with life. It's a pattern we live by, it's a cadence, a pattern of life but imagine if it were only ever dark how awful that would be. In some countries of course, far north and far south, there are many months of darkness in winter.

In life, darkness and fear, well they seem to be such common bedfellows. I guess that’s because in the dark we can't see what's coming at us. I remember once when I was in the army and we were on exercise in a rainforest and the canopy of this rainforest was so incredibly thick that it was pitch black at night, you couldn't even see your hand 6 inches in front of your face. And in that sort of darkness you can't see what’s coming at you, you can't see where you're going so darkness is a scary place sometimes.

Now let’s take a look at our own lives. We can look back on the dark times, those periods that we'd rather forget, maybe a broken relationship or sickness or the death of a loved one, real financial difficulties. Maybe you've been through a war and you've seen people killed or you've been in prison. Perhaps you've seen everything you worked for so hard over so many years just go down the drain or someone’s hurt you incredibly deeply, someone you trusted.

Perhaps you've been through a time of depression or real loneliness or working so hard you just don't feel that you have a life. The list just goes on and on and on, life has its dark times doesn't it? Maybe you're going through one right now, maybe, who knows, there's one right around the next corner or next year or the year after that.

Dark times, well they're like part of a fabric of our lives as much as we'd rather they weren't there and that’s why we're kicking off this little series over the next couple of weeks called, "Dark Night, Bright Light" because light is the opposite of darkness and when we're travelling through those dark times, light is the very thing we need. The problem is it can be so hard to find, so hard to believe in or hope for.

You might only experience in those dark times, those lonely times, those times where I felt betrayed, the times of deep distress, it's a fear that’s debilitating. It's like you don't even have the strength to lift up your head and look towards God. And hope. Well, when we lose hope it's a devastating thing because there's no sense of there being a future.

I once read a book about a holocaust survivor, Victor Frankel and he makes the point so powerfully when he recalls an experience from the concentration camp. Have a listen to what he writes:

The prisoner who has lost faith in the future, his future was doomed. With his loss of belief in his future he also lost his spiritual hold. He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment, not for ourselves which would have been pointless but for our friends.

Usually it began with a prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash and to go out on the parade ground. No entreaties, not blows, no threats had any affect; he just lay there hardly moving. If this crisis was brought about by an illness he refused to be taken to the sick bay or to do anything to help himself. He simply gave up, there he remained lying in his own excrement and nothing bothered him anymore.

It's extreme but you recognise it, it happens to all of us sometimes. We give up, we have this sense that there's no future, no hope, just darkness, just the same. Why have we spent so much time describing the darkness today? I guess for me it helps to put words around it, it helps to describe what it is because this is something that we can all relate to.

Somehow we think it's just us but actually everyone goes through dark periods in their life, everyone. I have and you have and there are some real dark ones and then there are some that aren't quite so deep but they still rob us of the joy of living.

Tomorrow what we're going to see is that God, God is in the light business. Today I just want to share one passage with you from His word, the Old Testament book of Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 2:

The people walking in the darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

If you're walking in darkness at the moment I have a message for you from God, He plans to shine a light into that place. I remember the darkest days of my life, 13 years ago now, when I was completely alone. The darkness gets so inky black; the hole is so deep you can't imagine how you could possibly survive.

In the middle of all that a man, a pastor, a man called Ted Keating shared a message of Gods hope with me just the way I'm sharing with you today and from that little message I turned around and gave my life to Jesus and in the midst of that darkness a light began to shine, a light that was so bright, so warm. Later, later I discovered that Jesus once said:

I am the light of the world.

Well, He got that right; just the way Isaiah puts it:

The people walking in the darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.

Sometimes – we look at God’s promises with a “win some, lose some” kind of attitude. But God’s promises aren’t hit and miss. They’re promises that never fail. So – why do we lose some?

Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact which turns out to be blindingly obvious that if we want to take hold of God’s promises we have to do it His way. It’s an awesome thing when we finally get a handle on what it means to call Jesus the Lord of our Lives. Not just believing in Him as a kind of, you know, insurance policy for eternity, just in case. But living our whole lives for Him.

Yeah, there’s a cost, but it’s when we lay down our lives and put Him in the driver’s seat in every department that all of a sudden we find ourselves laying hold of His promises. In effect, living the in the Promised Land. A land of peace and joy in our hearts even though we go through battles and trials.

The problem is, every now and then when the promises of God are flowing in our lives, we think we can sneak something in, just something little. A compromise here, a white lie there, some little dishonest gain here. Just little things. I mean, by and large I’m playing God’s game why should he care. It’s only a little thing!

King Solomon was one of the wisest men who ever lived and he wrote this. You can read it in the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament Chapter 2, verse 14. He said:

Catch for us the foxes for the little foxes are the ones that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in the bloom.

In other words, it’s the little foxes that ruin the vine, even when it’s in bloom, even when things are looking rosy, it’s the little foxes that rob us of the fruit.

We’re going back today to the story of Joshua and Israel and the Promised Land. Centuries before this story Abraham had been promised by God, this land that we now know as Israel, the land flowing with milk and honey. And Israel spent centuries in slavery and oppression in Egypt and then forty years in the desert on the Exodus. There were lots of trials and tests and finally they make it to the Promised Land. The promise of God to Joshua is this:

I have given you every place where you set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the dessert to Lebanon from the great river Euphrates all the way through the Hittite country to the great sea on the west. No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses so I’ll be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you.

Great. So they honour God, they cross over, they destroy Jericho. It’s a miracle, this fortified city. They march around it for seven days blowing their trumpets and all of a sudden the walls come tumbling down. Not just some fable. This actually happened. And God gave them instructions. With Jericho, when they attacked they weren’t to take any plunder or booty. Why? Well God doesn’t tell us why, He just says this to them. Joshua Chapter 6, verse 18:

Keep away from the devoted things so that you will not bring about your own destruction by taking any of them. Otherwise you’ll make the camp of Israel liable to destruction and bring trouble on it. All the silver and gold that you find and the articles of bronze and iron are sacred to the Lord and must go into His treasury.

Well, fair enough, but you know something God wouldn’t notice if I just took one little thing for myself would He? I mean, surely not. I know He said, ‘Don’t take it so you won’t bring trouble on yourself’, but just one thing, it’s so shiny, so attractive, just one thing. Ever been there? I have. It’s called temptation. God’s way or my way. Clear choice. And so often it seems like such a little thing. No one else will know. God wouldn’t mind. We rationalize. We are masters at this stuff. But a man called Achan took some stuff. No one else knew. Joshua didn’t know. He just went on to the next battle after Jericho.

After all, the Lord had promised to be with Him and never to forsake him. In Joshua chapter 7, verse 1 this is what it says:

But the Israelites had acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things. Achan of the tribe of Judah took some of them so the Lord’s anger burned against Israel.

Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to a place called Ai which is near Bethaven to the east of Bethel, and told them, ‘Go up and spy out the region’. So the men went up and spied out Ai. When they returned to Joshua they said, ‘Not all the people will have to go up against Ai. Send 2,000 or 3,000 men to take it and do not weary the people for only a few men are there’.

So about 3,000 men went up there and they were routed by the men of Ai who killed about 36 of them. They chased the Israelites from the city gates as far as the stone quarries and struck them down the slopes. At this the heart of the people melted and became like water.”

Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell face down to the ground before the Ark of the Lord and remained there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same thing and sprinkled dust on their heads and Joshua said, ‘God, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan. Oh, Lord, what can I say now that Israel has been routed by its enemies? The Canaanites and the other people of the country will hear about this and they will surround us and wipe out our name from all the earth. What then will you do for your great name?’

The Lord said, ‘Joshua, stand up. What are you doing down on your face. Israel has sinned. They have violated my covenant which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen, they have lied. They have put them in their own possession. This is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies. They turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction”.

See they did all the same things they did in Jericho when they got to Ai. In Jericho they won and in Ai they lost. Why? Because of that one small sin. That hidden compromise. This one little thing robbed them of the promise of God. Let me say it again. This one little thing robbed them of the promise of God.

Wake up! How many want to be walking in the Promised Land. The success of what God’s called them to do, but sneak these little compromises in along the way. Come on! They rob us of the promises of God. Why did God make up that stupid rule? Don’t take the gold or the silver. To test their obedience. To sift the chaff from the wheat.

When Joshua dealt with this Achan brutally – had him stoned to death – God set things right. In our lives, in yours and mine, that’s what we need to do with those little compromises. Deal with them brutally. There is no room for compromise because those little hidden compromises rob us of the promises of God.

If you’ve been sitting and waiting for God to deliver on his promises and they’re not coming, they’re not coming, they’re not coming. What is He saying to you right now about the Achan’s – the little foxes – the little, seemingly inconsequential compromise in your life. Get it out. Deal with it like Joshua did.

As soon as he’d done that God gave him a plan. They took Ai and victory returned. God’s promises returned. Come on! God’s promises are not a case of win some, lose some. God delivers on each and every promise.

We rob ourselves of the promises when we let the little foxes creep in. Get rid of them! Decide once and for all, I want to live in God’s Promised Land. I want to be successful at the things that God calls me to do. I want to experience the miracles of God in my life. I want Jesus as Lord of my life. What do you think? That God’s promise is worth it.

Most of us like to be in control of our lives. But at the same time – we’d like to experience the promises of God. Problem is – those two things don’t always go together.  It turns out that there’s only one way into God’s Promised Land.

I have a confession to make, I used to be very much the "my way or the highway" kind of guy and every now and then the attitude still raises its ugly head. So it was a major thing for me to hand my life over to God. Not just a kind of "believe in Jesus from a distance" but to live my life for Him, to truly call Him the Lord of my life. And there's a big difference.

What I've discovered is that on the one hand you have to give up some things if you want Jesus to be the Lord of your life. But on the other, I can do so much more because instead of having to do everything in my own strength, He shows up and does miracle after miracle in every department of my life. And I look back on the journey and I think, "wow! I could never had done those things."

But our natural instinct is to do it our way, to be in charge and in control. Problem is that job belongs to God, I mean its hard work so what is it? What do we have to do to make Jesus the Lord of my life?

Over these last few weeks we've been looking at taking hold of the promises of God, in particular through the eyes of Joshua. He was the leader of Israel right at the end of those forty years they spent in the desert on the exodus and, and there he was after the forty years and they were just about to cross over into the Promised Land.

The Book of Joshua records the history, the promise of God to Abraham and then to Moses and then to Joshua was that:

Everywhere where your foot will tread I have already given to you.

And Joshua sent some spies across the check out the land and we looked at that yesterday on the program. They did the normal military things you'd expect a commander to do. Now, now comes time to cross over the Jordan River and they're going to have so many battles.

You see there are cities and nations and kings and armies in that Promised Land and they're going to have to take the Promised Land. It would have been so easy for Josh to say 'well I'm in charge here, it's my way or the highway' but what Joshua did next, well there were some pretty amazing things he did, four in all and it tells us who was really in charge.

The first thing, the first thing he did is he sent his officers through the camp to tell his people this:

When you see the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God being carried by the priests then you shall set out from your place. Follow it so that you may know the way that you should go for you have not passed this way before.

You can read that in Joshua chapter 3. In other words the Ark of the Covenant was where the presence of God rested. He put God in the lead; he put God in the driver’s seat at the head of the procession.

The second thing he did were, were twelve stones, this is pretty amazing, Joshua chapter 4, verse 4.

Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe and he said to them, ‘Go over before the Ark of the Lord your God in the middle of the Jordan River.

Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you "What do these stones mean?" You'll be able to tell them how the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.’

You see, what happened was, the Jordan obviously had a whole bunch of water in it, and for Israel to cross over from where they were into the Promised Land through the Jordan, God did exactly what He did when they fled out of Egypt into the desert. He stopped the waters from flowing so they could cross through on the dry land.

And Joshua says, "Let’s take these twelve stones and let’s build a memorial, an altar that honours God, a monument that he did this. God did this, He achieved this. Let’s recognise His goodness for generations to come." That's awesome; again you see God is in the front of Joshua's thinking.

The third thing he did, well this was really bizarre. He circumcised the nation. Ooh it makes my eyes water. I mean it seems bizarre to us and even in their context I think it was a pretty big call. Circumcision of the men was a sign of the covenant relationship between God and His people.

What do I mean by covenant? God made a promise, God promised them the Promised Land, He promised them peace, He promised them prosperity if only they would do what God had told them to do. And the way that that happened, way back in Abraham’s time centuries before, was that Abraham went and had all the males in his household circumcised.

It was a sign of the relationship and the promise between God and His people. And while they'd been out in the exodus in the desert all the adults who had left Egypt through the Red Sea died and there's a whole new generation and that generation hadn't been circumcised. The law said that they had to be circumcised because it was a symbol of their relationship with God and God said to Joshua:

Make flint knives and circumcise the lot.

You see here they are, they've been in slavey in Egypt for centuries, they spend forty years in the desert, they're about to cross into the Promised Land, it's almost there in the day, what happens? Joshua says, "Well, just one minute, stop, whoa. All the boys are going to be circumcised, all the men, all the boys. We're going to be circumcised." And so they then had to hang around after this painful thing and wait for them all to heal.

And the fourth thing is they celebrated the Passover. Okay, must be ready to go now, time to, time to go, let’s cross over. No, no its time to celebrate the Passover. Remember how forty years before God had taken them out of Egypt through the Passover miracle, look back and remember God’s goodness.

He sends the Ark of the Covenant out first, he picks up stones as a memorial, he has everybody circumcised, he celebrates the Passover. Not things that you or I would do today but they all said one thing. Sure, we want to take the Promised Land but God comes first.

The Ark of the Covenant: God will go first, we'll follow Him, He takes the lead.

The stones: let’s put a marker here in faith to remember for generations to come the miracle that God performed to bring us into the Promised Land.

Circumcision: let’s get our relationship right with God.

Passover: let’s honour God for all that He's done.

See here's the crunch, Israel had a huge promise ahead of them but they were going to take hold of that promise by honouring God first. Not my way or the highway: God’s way, whatever the circumstances, whatever the outcome – His way.

It's the same for us today. So many people believe in Jesus, they want to lay hold of His promises for their lives but we want to do it our way. We sing songs, 'Jesus is Lord', is He really? Are we really prepared to do it His way? No little compromises, no little shortcuts, no 'I'll forget about Him and not pray today', no 'Oh well I don't have to read His word, the Bible today'.

WAKE UP! God’s promises only happen one way, His way. Jesus said:

I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one will come to the Father except through me.

This radical edgy saviour, wasn't into pampering Himself, He did it His Fathers way. There's only one way to the Promised Land – Jesus.

Sometimes God’s promises can be a bit confusing.  Do you just sit back, believe and wait for Him to deliver?  Or do you have some part to play – in taking hold of those promises?  Discerning that, how much God wants you to do and how much He wants you to leave to Him, isn’t always easy is it?

We've been talking the last couple of weeks about taking hold of God’s wonderful and outrageous promises in our lives. Not easy sometimes and it seems that we can face uphill battle after uphill battle and we're left wondering, "is this really what God’s promises are all about?"

But my hunch is when God makes promises He means us to believe them and press through those battles like we believe them. A bit like Joshua when he was about to lead Israel into the Promised Land after centuries of slavery in Egypt and forty years wandering through the desert on the exodus, standing on the banks of the Jordan ready to cross over into that Promised Land.

As we've seen over the last couple of weeks God told Joshua that there'd be a lot of battles but He also reminded him that this was the Promised Land. Then, then Joshua did something that's bothered me for a long time, he sent some spies across the river to check it out and there in lies my dilemma.

You see here's the dilemma for me, on the one hand we're supposed to trust in God, without faith it's impossible to please God. And look at what God said to Joshua about the battles that they were going to face when they headed into the Promised Land. He said:

No-one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I'll be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land that I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and courageous, don't be terrified, don't be discouraged because the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

Now you get a promise like that from God and that's serious stuff. God is calling you into a difficult place but encouraging you with His promise and Joshua had a decision to make. To step over the Jordan, to head down the path, to encounter the battles, trust God, battle his way through, keep going or turn away and not cross over into the Promised Land.

But here's what Joshua did, you see he hears the promises of God but before he headed off he sent some spies across the river into the Promised Land to check it all out. The first city they came to was Jericho, it tells us in Joshua chapter 2:

Then Joshua secretly sent two spies telling them, ‘Go look over the land especially Jericho.’ So they went and they entered the house of a prostitute called Rahab and they stayed there.

Now come on, is that really trusting God? God comes along and promises you the land, He promises you He's going to be with you, He promises you that He's already given you the land and no-one will be able to stand against you and then it's almost like Joshua doesn't trust Him. He sends out spies and wait for this, they go and shack up with a prostitute.

Now the rest of the story is they check out the land, the King finds out that they're there and comes to try and kill them and Rahab, this prostitute helps them flee and they promised to keep her safe when they come and attack Jericho.

When they came back to Joshua on the other side of the Jordan they reported this, they said:

The Lord has surely given the whole land into our hands. All the people are melting in fear because of us.

You see this bothered me for a long time, why did Joshua do that? Why, why didn't he just trust God and go and do it? And why didn't God get upset with Joshua for sending spies and checking it out for himself? They're all good questions.

The answer came to me one day. I was reading a story in the New Testament something that happened centuries later. The Apostle Peter is in jail, he's being persecuted and an angel comes and springs him out of jail. The angel woke him up in the middle of the night and said this:

'Get up quickly’ and the chains fell off Peter and the angel said to him, ‘Fasten your belt, put on you sandals’ and Peter did. ‘Wrap you cloak around you and follow me.’ Peter did. And the gates swung open and Peter got out.

You can read about it in Acts chapter 12 beginning at verse 6. See, the angel didn't dress Peter because he could do that for himself. The angel did the miracles that Peter couldn't do, the angel got rid of the chains, the angel flung the gates open.

For me I'm a doer, I plan, I execute, I achieve, I've been like that all my life. I go and get it, classic type A personality and the struggle for me is that God comes along and promises me all these things that my whole life had eluded me.

Relationships, peace and joy and a quiet calm delight, this Promised Land in my heart, this Kingdom of God in my heart. And I had a choice. Either I try to do this in my own strength, well that would never work, or I let God have the drivers seat, I let Him be in control and I follow after Him in faith and obviously its the latter, obviously that’s the right thing to do but you know something, we can become spiritual couch potatoes doing that. God calls us to do our bit too.

Joshua received promises from God, this Promised Land, "I'm going to give it to you. No-one will stand against you; don't be afraid I'm with you." So Joshua receives those promises from God and then he sent spies ahead, why? Because any good military operation always does forward reconnaissance to see what's out there to plan ahead.

It's an important principle here. Joshua received the promises of God, he had to cross into the Promised Land and to do the things he could and should do, to plan, to look ahead, to organise the people and the armies to get them through and rely on the miracles of God that only God could do.

Imagine moving a million or so people into this land, moving huge armies, what a massive logistical operation. God just didn't wave a wand. Joshua and his leaders had to plan and execute that and so Joshua sends a spy, he spies out the land, they come back with the right report, he crosses over into the Promised Land and then you can read the story for yourself.

Jericho was a fortified city, it was almost impregnable and instead of attacking it they listened to God. God told Joshua 'just march around it for 7 days in a row blowing your horns and the walls will fall down.' You know something, the walls did fall down, God did the thing that Joshua and his people couldn't do.

You see the problem with us is we receive the promises of God and then we expect it all to go smoothly and miraculously, never thinking ahead, never doing a forward reconnaissance to look at what's likely to happen.

There are going to be obstacles, there are going to be battles. You know as we follow after the promises of God the enemy and the world are going to come against us and we need to get our minds around those things, we need to know what to expect, we need to use the brains God has given us and then rely on the miracles that He has to do along the way to get us in the Promised Land.

Now for me, every day, that takes wisdom, that's why I pray each morning, that's why I spend time every morning with God because I'm prone to do a whole bunch of things in my own strength and sometimes I get tired and dejected and I expect God to do it all. They are two ends of the spectrum but somewhere in the middle, somewhere in God’s wisdom, somewhere in God’s blessing is the right answer.

God expects us to do the things that we can do and then as we put our faith in Him, God shows up with the miracles to do the things we couldn't possibly do.

When you hear the word “prosperity” it conjures up all sorts of images doesn’t it, not all of them positive. And yet, it’s a word that God uses rather a lot. The question is – what does He mean by it and how do you lay hold of it?

I don't think that there’s a person on this earth that doesn't want to be prosperous. The question is, exactly what does that mean? What is prosperity? When I put on a few pounds in weight and my aunty sees me, she says in her thick European accent, "My you're looking prosperous." Hmm, I don't think that’s what it means. When we think of prosperity we think of wealth and money and a nice house and a car and all that stuff, but when God thinks of prosperity He's thinking about so much more.

He's thinking about what’s going on in our hearts and He's thinking about success in doing the things He's called us to do and achieving the things He's called us to achieve. Despite all the battles we're going through, despite all the opposition. In fact it's interesting to look at what God says to Israel’s leader Joshua, about prosperity and success just before he leads Israel over the Jordan to cross into the Promised Land.

There is Israel, they've spent the last forty years wandering around the desert in the exodus and before that centuries in slavery in Egypt and they're about to cross over into a land that God promised to Abraham centuries before, that's why it's called the Promised Land and God is expecting some stiff opposition for Joshua and his people when they cross over the Jordan to take that Promised Land. How do we know that? Because when God talks to Joshua just before he crosses over, He says this:

Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to take the land that I swore to their forefathers to give them. Be strong and very courageous...

And then later He says:

Be strong and courageous. Don't be terrified; don't be discouraged for I am with you where ever you go.

You know I always think it's a worry when God says to me, "Well Berni, you know you need to be strong and courageous. Don't be terrified, don't be discouraged." You think, "Oh, oh, this is not going to be pleasant." And that’s often the way you know, as we decide to lay hold of the promises of God in our hearts, things so often get a whole bunch worse before they get better. You know Jesus says, "Peace. My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you." And we think, "Yeah man, that’s what I want. There's a promise from God that I want. I want God’s peace in my life." You know, Jesus promised that to His disciples just before He was about to be crucified. It was a dangerous and fearful and terrible time, a time of pain and loss and fear for the disciples even fear for their own lives. So He explains what He's on about, He says this:

My peace I leave with you and my peace I give to you. I don't give these things to you the way the world does, don't let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.

You see we often have to deal with obstacles and fears to lay a hold of the promises of God in our lives. I do, you do, in fact we all do. And those times are the times when we grow. When we understand that this is the reality and the promises of God stand in that reality, it doesn't matter what obstacles there are, it doesn't matter how many battles there are ahead. You see Israel, when they crossed into the Promised Land had to fight battle after battle after battle with the people that were already there.

So what's our part in all of this? God makes a promise, how do we respond to that promise? Well God said to Joshua:

Be careful to obey all the law that my servant Moses gave you. Don't turn from it from the right or the left so that you will be successful where ever you go. Meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do everything that's written in it. Then, then you'll be prosperous and successful.

The picture here is that God has spoken, He's spoken through the Word of God, through the Bible, through His Son Jesus and there's this beautiful picture of meditating on what God’s saying day and night so that it becomes a part of us. So that we start living our lives God’s way, then God says, "You’ll be prosperous and successful."

Now I don't think that all means we're going to be millionaires or billionaires, I don't think that at all, some people will be others won't be. Prosperous and successful in what God has called us to. You see He was talking to Joshua; He had called Joshua to lead Israel, God’s chosen people into the Promised Land. That's what Joshua was getting prosperous and successful at doing.

Now I know so many people who believe in God, who believe in Jesus, they own a Bible, "Well I think it's somewhere, it's up in the cupboard or it's in the bedside table or it's somewhere gathering dust." I want to tell you something about the word of God; I would be a nervous wreck by now if I didn't spend time in God’s word every day.

I mean, what I do is I'm in the front line of ministry, my job is leading people into the Promised Land through these programs, through doing what I'm doing right now. Helping people to take a hold of God’s promise in their lives. And I have to tell you something, the devil is not happy about that, the world is not always happy about that, even other Christians don't always understand that call.

As God’s grown this ministry over these last five years, you know we started recording these programs five years ago and there wasn't a single radio station that had committed to airing them, nothing, just a call from God, just a promise from Him written on my heart by His spirit.

And today these programs go to air on over 700 stations in 80 countries and they're listened to by millions of people each week and you think, "Wow, that's fantastic, that's great!" And it is but do you have any idea how many trials and battles and oppositions and lack of funds and do you have any idea how hard that was along the way and some days still continues to be?

We all have to go through this stuff in our lives and whatever God’s called us to. God’s called you to something entirely different to me, that’s because we're different and when we're going through that stuff there’s a temptation to do it our way or in our strength or to make compromises or pull over and to stop.

The promise of God to Joshua was, "Get my Word into you, meditate on it day and night. Soak it in, drink it in, feed on it, let it never depart from you and that's where your prosperity and success will be." In His word God reminds us of His promises; His spirit comes and writes them on our hearts.

What soldier would walk out onto a battle field without a weapon? The apostle Paul, when he was talking about the 'armour of God' in Ephesians chapter 6 in the New Testament talks about "The sword of the Spirit which is the word of God." And there are so many people who believe in God, who believe Jesus, who walk out onto that spiritual battle field every day and leave God’s word in the cupboard to gather dust and wonder why they suffer defeat after defeat - ah der! That's nuts!

When God makes a promise, as He did through Jesus to give us an abundant wonderful life that promise is a done deal. People, things, circumstances will come against us but if we lay a hold of the promises of God in our hearts, just in a simple imperfect faith, they won't be able to stand against us and God will never leave us or forsake us and when we let His word reign in our hearts, His success and His prosperity will chase us down.

When the chips are down, when things are against you – gee it can be hard to hang onto the promises of God.  Really hard.  That’s why He makes promises in a way that – well, puts courage in your heart.

So many things in life promise so much but in the end so many of them fail to deliver and my hunch is that, for many people, it kind of sums up their experience of God.

This Jesus, I mean He promises so much, peace and joy and a life lived in all of it's abundance but somehow the experience can fall short of the promise. Must have felt a little bit like that for Israel after centuries in slavery and forty years wandering through the desert.

They were about to cross over into the land that God promised Abraham all those centuries before, the Promised Land. But as they looked ahead into that Promised Land what they saw was a whole bunch of tribes and nations already occupying it. There'd have to be battle after battle to take the Promised Land, could this really be one of the promises of God, I mean really?

Well you know, Israel was there, they were on the banks of the Jordan on one side and they were about to cross over into this Promised Land, they'd spent the last forty years wandering through the desert on the exodus. Somehow kind of believing, very imperfectly I might add, of a promise made to Abraham centuries before that God would give this land to Abraham's descendants.

And here they were, Israel, Abraham’s descendants, and they looked across the river and they saw all these people and tribes and kings and fortified cities and armies. On the one hand they wanted to believe in God’s promise but on the other hand they're looking at the reality thinking, "wow, how is that ever going to happen?"

You know God calls us to His Promised Land here and now today. It promises all the way through the Bible about a relationship with God. Jesus says in John chapter 10, verse 10, he says:

The thief you know only comes to steal, kill and destroy but I've come that you might have life in all its abundance.

Well think about that for a minute. Look at our lives and look around at what’s going on, can we have a really abundant life? Again, Jesus says in Matthew chapter 13, he says:

The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it he hid it again and in his joy he went and sold all that he had to buy that field.

Wow, you know God’s kingdom, God’s Promised Land is like … well it's like a treasure. When we give our lives to Jesus lock, stock and barrel He invites us into a land of promises and they're promises so different to what the world promises. You see His Promised Land isn't a physical land or physical wealth and all that other stuff, it's quite different. Once He was asked by some religious leaders of the day, when this Kingdom of God would come and Jesus said:

The Kingdom of God doesn't come with your careful observation. People won't say 'Oh here it is or there it is'. No, he said, the kingdom of God is within you.

The Promised Land isn't something out there, it's not a new house or a new car or a new job. The Promised Land, the Kingdom of God is in our hearts. And so often we feel like Joshua, standing on the threshold looking back at what's been and looking forward and wanting to believe the promises of God but you look around and some days they're so hard to believe.

I want to talk right now about taking courage in the promises of God. This is so important because you know what we do, you and I, we focus on the things we can see. We focus on the broken relationships or the lack of money or all the problems we have in our lives and we think, "Oh, I don't think God’s promises can ever come". But God calls us to set our eyes on the things that are above, to set our eyes on heavenly things. Look again at what God said to Joshua about His Promised Land:

I have given you every place where you will set your foot as I promised to Moses.

Isn't it interesting. He uses the past tense, actually it’s the Hebrew perfect tense, "something that is done and completed". "I have given you every place where you will set your foot …" As far as God was concerned the Promised Land was a done deal, it was given and when God gives, no-one can block that. That's God’s perspective. And yet our perspective is to focus on all the obstacles and the enemies and the fears and the doubts and the problems.

Can I tell you something? When I became a Christian about 15 years ago I had so much dysfunction in my life I can't begin to tell you. And one of the first promises of God that I heard was that one we talked about before in John chapter 10, verse 10 where Jesus said:

I have come that you may have life in all its fullness and its abundance.

It's a promise that He wrote on my heart and somehow I just decided to believe it like a child. Jesus came because He wants me to have an abundant life. Now if I looked at me and my life and the predicaments and all the pain and the trouble I was in, I had no right to believe that promise from Jesus but somehow God’s word, well the Holy Spirit comes along and it's like a gift. He lifts our eyes up to see heavenly things.

And I believed in that promise so imperfectly and I had to go through some things. And I was afraid some days and I was lonely some days and some days I wanted to give up. But at the end of the day I decided to believe.

What Jesus did for you and me on the cross was to remove all the sin, all the reproach of the past and open up a door into an abundant, outrageous and wonderful relationship with God. It is a done deal, past completed, it is finished.

The abundant life has been purchased for us on that cross and now, now’s time to walk in it and the point of what God said to Joshua was that there will be battles:

I've given you every place where you will set your foot as I promised Moses. No-one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life because as I was with Moses so I will be with you. I'll never leave you or forsake you.

You see, God’s promise is a done deal. Sure people are going to come against us, things are going to come against us, circumstances are going to come against us and God says, ‘I'll never leave you or forsake you.’ The promise is a done deal and that is a completely different way of looking at things isn't it? Completely different.

For me and my life over these last dozen and a half or so years and every day here and now, the courage I have to face the people and the obstacles are the promises of God. Because when God promises something nobody, but nobody can take it away. The focus of the promise is our relationship with God, the peace and the joy that flows from that.

All the other stuff, the relationships and the health and the money, all that’s temporary, that will come and go but what will last forever is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And it's an act of faith to take courage in the promises of God. Because when God promises something, when Jesus says, "I have come for you to have an abundant life in all it's fullness", you know something that’s a promise and we lay hold of that promise through faith by believing in the word of God.