Our generation is in heavy pursuit of The Promised Land. We have inherited a dry and barren culture, buried under years of apathy and pride. We have been hurt by the church, looked down on and abused by men and women in places of spiritual authority. And we long for something more. We are believing in something more.
But we have to really ask ourselves what The Promised Land is – what we believe it to be and what the reality awaiting us entails. The unspoken truth is that many of my generation believe The Promised Land is a place of ease, comfort, and delight. We have a worldly expectation of The Promised Land. Although we look at the desert as a spiritual metaphor, we look at The Promised Land as a political one.
Are we lying to ourselves? Are we capable of loving Jesus in any way other than the one that provides us with our own wants? Do we truly want the Kingdom of God? Or do we want to use it as an avenue to the same kind of riches, fame, and emotion the rest of the world is striving for?
The Joshua Generation is not a plush living situation. Remember that the scouts who went into The Promised Land came back terrified! All but two. There are giants in The Promised Land. There are battles. If apathy defined the desert, turmoil defines The Promised Land. Joshua wasn’t a king. He was a warrior. He struggled for the inheritance, even after he received it. The people of Israel did not reach an oasis in Canaan. They reached a battleground.
If our generation is going to live in the spiritual ‘Promised Land’ that covers so much of our rhetoric, we have to be willing to accept the realities waiting for us there.
Also, we have to be thankful for the generation before us. We have to stop looking at them with judgment and disdain. One thing I always think about when I think about the Israelites in the wilderness is that God was there. A pillar of fire, a cloud, manna – the Lord was in the desert. In that regard, what makes ‘The Promised Land’ any more beautiful? Is not the Presence of God more wonderful than all the milk and honey you can eat?
My father’s generation followed God through the desert. And that is more than commendable. Men like my dad, Charlie Dodd, Darrell Dunton (and many women in my life too) taught me how to pursue God in any and all setting or circumstance. For that, I owe my thanks. I wouldn’t know how to lean on God, to trust in His faithfulness, during the battles ahead if I did not witness their faithfulness in the void before.
The Promised Land is not about Christians winning the SuperBowl. It is about us living the inheritance pledged to us. This inheritance is not fame, or fortune, or power. It is an identity of son and daughter of the King. An inheritance does not negate struggle. The Bible is very clear about the value of suffering. The Beatitudes bless perseverance, not accomplishment.
So, we are left as a generation with our heart in our hands, beckoned by the call, limping at the borders. And we are left with the important question: what is The Promised Land? For this generation, what does it really mean to say we want to be a ‘Joshua Generation’? Because here is the truth: our hot and cold generation pursues the Kingdom when we get rallied behind the idea of The Promised Land and we cower when we get face-to-face with the reality of life in The Promised Land. We are still afraid of giants, both real and imagined.
I don’t have any answers. I don’t know where the Lord is taking us. I’m not sure what rivers we’ll cross, what fortresses we’ll march around, what tears will be shed, what pain will be endured. But if we want to pursue it, we must pursue it for what it is, not for what we would want it to be.
