Immediately after Joshua’s encounter with the Captain of the hosts, he had to face the seemingly impossible, impregnable stronghold of Jericho. Of course, the Lord could have flicked Jericho with His little finger and it would have ceased to exist, but He did not want it to be that easy. Though the defeat of Jericho was going to require His intervention, the Lord was requiring His people to be vitally engaged in the fight for their promises. This is because of an important basic principle–anything that comes too fast or too easily is usually insignificant.  

There are...

The four main events that we have covered on this subject have been:
 

1. The crossing of the Jordan River represents the death that the people of God must enter into by dying to self, and how death would overflow all of its banks during the time of the harvest, which is the end of the age.
2. The circumcision at Gilgal, which represents the removal of the flesh or carnal nature, must be accomplished before we can take possession of our promises. It was also here that Israel was made to appear weak in the
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Before we began our study of the works of the flesh and growing in the fruit of the Spirit, we were studying what it means to possess our Promised Land. I want to return to this with a brief reminder of what we covered there so we can begin again where we left off.

From Death to Life

We began by addressing how the recent earthquakes and tsunamis were taxing the whole world’s relief efforts, and how we could expect these kinds of disasters to not only continue, but increase. Of course, that was before...

It is interesting that the last aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is “self-control” (Galatians 5:23). Many Christians, in seeking to become submitted to the Holy Spirit or to eschew glory for anything that is accomplished through them spiritually, often say such things as: “That was not me—that was the Lord.” This may be a noble attempt to not take glory for things accomplished by the Lord, but it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Spirit actually does His work. Even worse, this often comes across to others as something between supreme arrogance and ridiculous.

I...

The next aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is “gentleness” (Galatians 5:23). This is defined as being “mild, kind,” or “not being rough, violent, harsh, or severe.” Some people may be born with a natural gentle demeanor, but the fruit of the Spirit that is gentleness is to conduct yourself with sensitivity and consideration for others.

Gentleness is a characteristic that enables others to feel that they can get close to you and be safe. If you are wondering why it seems that people do not want to be close to...