Do you live in the Land of Defeat and Despair? First of all, what country does the land of Defeat and Despair reside in? Is it in heaven? Or hell? I’d say most of the time we are feeling defeated we don’t much feel like we are in a heavenly place. When God sees us in the Land of Defeat and Despair He says, “Pack up your bags we are moving out. No longer will you live there but you will live in the Land of Hope and which is filled with my promises.” The gifts of joy and peace are in the Land of Hope. They grow from the trees there like apples of gold in settings of silver. Joy and peace shine with the pure love of God and when we partake of the fruit of joy and peace our souls will light up with joy and our feet will walk in paths of peace. Our thoughts will overflow with thanksgiving to the One who leads us into all joy. 

God will do all he has promised because his promises are bigger than us. We can not fulfill his promises to us, only He can do it. Truthfully, most of the time we can’t fulfill our own promises to ourselves, remember the last time you said you would give up sugar, or start walking 30 minutes every day?  But God promises to lead us out of the Land of Defeat and Despair and into the Land of Hope and promise. 

We are not to allow our weakness to prevail over Gods strength. We are to overcome all obstacles by Gods power at work in us. “…My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…”(2 Corinthians 12:9). One of the dictionary definitions of grace is this; Deliverance from sin. Grace delivers us from sin. Grace is Gods power made perfect in our weakness. When our ‘bestie’ sin comes and knocks on our door we usually run to the door and fling it open, so excited to go out and play with our friend. Usually in the process we trip over the door frame and end up rolling in the mud with our bestie. After a bit, instead of playing fair, our bestie gives us a punch or maybe pulls our hair. All of a sudden playing with our favorite sin isn’t so much fun any more. We call out to God for salvation and he sends Grace to help us. Grace sends sin skedaddling down the road and then Grace lifts us out of the mud, cleans us up, and takes us back inside. The next time our ‘bestie’ sin comes knocking on the door instead of answering the door ourselves all we have to do is send Grace to the door. Grace is full of strength. Graceful ballerinas do not trip and fall. When Grace opens the door she sends sin on it’s way and sin is now the one who trips and falls in it’s hurry to leave. The power of Gods grace is made perfect in our weakness. Grace indeed delivers us from sin and opens the door to salvation.     

God loves you.  He has prepared you for this very moment in time. The time to decide if you will continue to live in the Land of Defeat and Despair or join him on the move to the Land of Hope. On your journey between the Land of Defeat and Despair and the Land of Hope, full of the promises of God, you will have learning experiences, just like the Israelites did on the way from Egypt to Canaan. Their learning experiences are their story, their witness to us of what God did for them. On your journey to the promised land you will experience Gods power and work in your life also and it will be your witness to God….your story to tell of His glory and power at work in your life.  Victory is ours. It has been guaranteed by the blood of Jesus. You are no longer alone, you are united with the power of God. 

The Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. They wanted a change in their life, they wanted freedom.  In fact God had promised them freedom, but day after day they trudged on as slaves. Then came the day God set them free from their captors. When they marched out of Egypt freedom was theirs. God had given it to them. But they didn’t always choose to use their freedom. Sometimes when they got up in the morning they left it under the bed. Then instead of change being something they wanted and needed they became afraid of the very thing that could set them free.  

When the Israelites were trapped between the Red Sea and their former masters marching to take them back into slavery they couldn’t see any other possibility for their future than certain death. They were trapped with the enemy coming up behind them and the Red Sea before them. Death was eminent and they wanted to go back to their old familiar stomping grounds of slavery. Surely slavery was better than death. Rather than whole heartedly embracing the change God had given to them they had kicked it under their bed and now it resided in the dark and it looked scary.  

When we rely on our own self power to change we have fear because we can not clearly see the future. But if we could only see the change God offers us by the full light of day we would embrace its beauty for God only wants to use change in our lives to bring us into our promised land. The reason most of us fear change is because we imagine crawling under that dark dusty bed with the scary monster himself. There might be spiders under there. Or maybe you have allergies to dust. You can’t see what shape change is so it is easier to continue living as a slave.  

The Israelites grumbled and complained about their situation. Now I can be pretty sure that after spending their whole lives as slaves grumbling and complaining was a daily occurrence for them. The problem is while they were physically free from their previous masters, they still remained in slavery. Slavery for example to grumbling and complaining. Because as long as they were grumbling and complaining they were focused on themselves and how impotent they were rather than focusing on the power of God.

True freedom is found not in living according to our plan, but in giving up our plan and living Gods. But too often just like the Israelites we would rather remain in slavery than die the death to self. But true peace and joy only abides in humility. A humility that dies to self and lives for God. A humility that seeks a power outside our own. A humility that seeks a wisdom outside our own. A humility that is willing to give up grumbling and complaining and be joyful in all situations.  

The problem is we want to hold onto our ‘right’ to grumble and complain. After all if we have been treated unfairly or life hasn’t happened quite like we thought it should, then we want to retain our ‘right’ to grumble and complain. But grumbling and complaining keep us just as enslaved as the Israelites were when in bondage to the Egyptians because grumbling and complaining exalts not God, but us and our idea of how life should be treating us.

Do you really want to live in the promised land of peace and joy? Then ask for humility, because only humility gives us the freedom to live the peace and joy that exists in heaven on this earth.    

I have come to the conclusion that dying to self can be compared to climbing to the top of an active volcano and jumping into the flaming fire and molten lava. First of all it’s hard enough to get to the place of even considering dying to self. Just imagine the climb to the top of an active volcano. Then at the edge of the volcano you have the choice to die to self and jump in. Once you jump, you die, but you become part of something bigger. You are on fire, part of something unstoppable and bigger than yourself.  

But, who wants to die to self in order to become part of something bigger? We all like to consider ourselves the biggest. Pride actuated within our hearts rules us and keeps us smaller and more dead to our potential than if we jumped in the fire and died to self to become a part of something bigger than we are. When we die to self, our life becomes the smoke ascending from the volcano, a holy sacrifice to God and his eternal wisdom.  

It’s our pride that keeps us small, our pride lies to us, it tells us we are big enough on our own without jumping into the fire. It tells us if we jump we give up everything we ever wanted and we will never enjoy the fruits of serving ourselves again. Pride actually keeps us in a tiny little prison too afraid to jump. Too afraid of the uncertainty of being truly alive while actually dead. It doesn’t seem possible so we don’t. Many of us don’t even try to climb the mountain to look in to the top of the volcano and even consider jumping in. There are people who say only the weak believe in God but it is only by the strength of God that we can jump into the midst of the raging volcano.  

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced the fire. They had two choices, worship the king of this earth or worship the King of the universe. Basically they could choose to worship the temporal or the eternal. They chose to worship the eternal God of heaven and not only die to self, but face the possibility of physical death as well.  

King Nebuchadnezzar had the same choice. But rather than worship his creator he chose to insist on receiving worship that wasn’t his to receive. When the three Israelites chose to worship the eternal God they opened themselves up to something bigger and more powerful than self. King Neb on the other hand made his world smaller by focusing on his own selfish desires.  

When the Israelites would not bow down to him, King Neb became angry. Anger is a fire inside of us desiring to be fed. His fire demanded the death of those who would not cave to his wishes. In the process of heating the fires of the furnace as hot as they had ever been several of his faithful soldiers died from the heat. Innocent people died because King Neb needed to feed the angry beast within. How many innocent people have been stepped on, pushed aside, ignored, because an inflated self pushed ahead knocking down anything in it’s way?

When the Israelites stepped inside the fire, their world became bigger. The Son of the eternal God himself walked with them and protected them from the fire which had killed several soldier who came too near to it. When King Neb saw the three Israelites still alive and a fourth walking with them, he recognized a power bigger than his own. His own self aggrandized world of power shrank immensely in the presence of the power of God. 

We can jump into the volcano and die to self while becoming a part of something bigger through no effort of our own except the giving up of self. Or we can walk away and next to the volcano pick up some sticks and start our own fire. But no matter how hard we try, no matter how far we run, or how out of breath we are with trying to keep our fire going, it will always be a tiny little self powered fire in danger of being put out by the next rain cloud headed our direction.  

 God’s wisdom and beauty is like a fall day.  There is beauty in death to self.