Locating Your Promise Land
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This month started with a crash course, and I was the case study. Yal, I learned a lot about myself. Ms. Clarisee herself, who is so self-reflective, discovered there were so many things going on inside of her that she didn’t realize. There were decisions that I thought I made with a clear mind that was cloudy judgment at best.
What I See Clearly
Progress can be deceiving, and movement can be distracting because it’s possible to be moving forward toward purpose in one area, and running away in another.
So I wanted to start by asking you, Where are you? In proximity to what God has promised, Where are you?
If you had asked me this question at the end of last year, my answer would have been different, but my location was off. See, I was so focused on doing everything God told me to do that I didn’t realize I was also doing things He never told me to do. I thought I was headed to the Promised Land, but I looked up and found myself in a wilderness, and I had no clue how I got there.
Oxford defines a wilderness as an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region. In a nutshell, it is a place that you ran to instead of pursuing God’s promise for your life. It doesn’t contain your destiny and has no capacity for you to grow or develop. Little by little you let go of who you’re meant to be as you settle for what the wilderness has to offer.
So once I realized where I was, God answered my question of how I got there.
I Settled
Running doesn’t always look like running. Sometimes it looks like settling. It can mean accepting less than what we deserve or giving less than what God asked for. It often looks like accepting situations that look like they’ll require less of you because deep down you’re not sure if you’re good enough to give more. It’s deceptive because it seems like it takes less, but it costs you more. In the end, you have to lessen yourself because there’s never space for you to grow into who you are meant to be.
What I See Clearly
Settling is a symptom of a misplaced identity because if you know what you are worth and who you are, you recognize what is yours and reject what is not. It’s also an indication of someone who is comfortable lying to themselves. Deep down we know what we’re settling for is not enough, but we tell ourselves it is and ignore every inclination of the truth. It seems easier to believe the lie than face the fact that we have an unmet desire.
The truth is none of us really like unmet desires. We like to be satisfied, and when we’re not, we often try to find something to fill the void. It’s the chase of trying to find the next thing to satisfy our desires that leads us to the wilderness. It can happen so subtly that we don’t realize we’ve settled for less than what God promised us.
To open my eyes, I took myself back to the moment something presented itself as a solution to fulfill what I saw as an unmet desire. And then I pushed myself to be honest about how I was feeling at the time and what I wanted. Was I lonely, ready to give up, desperate, or at the point where I just wanted something to fill the void? At that moment, was anything in me willing to settle? That helped me to see if what I accepted was a temptation or divine fulfillment and if my decision was driven by God or my desires?
Then I asked myself, when I experienced this “fulfillment,” did I have to justify or make excuses for the results? I’ve learned that when it’s God, it’s complete, but when it’s not, it’s not quite fully formed. When something is missing, we find a way to explain to ourselves its lack of completion. Settling is always surrounded by justification, explanation, and excuses. You just have to be honest with yourself to see it.
So how do we fix this? For me, first, I had to repent for my stupidity and rebellion, and then I committed to double-checking my desires with prayer. Because the solution is being led by God and submitting our desires to Him, but to do that we must value asking God for His direction and respect when He says no.
This year let’s promise ourselves that we will tell ourselves the truth. I refuse to lie to myself by justifying, excusing, or avoiding facing the truth. I wasn’t meant to coexist with a lie, and I won’t one moment longer. I won’t prioritize my desire to satisfy myself over my desire for God because my life has shown me that satisfying God is the safest way to satisfy me. All of my regrets, relationships I should’ve never been in, habits I should have never had, bonds that shouldn’t have been formed, mistakes when I knew I knew better- all of those came from me trying to satisfy myself in a way God told me I shouldn’t.
I Fell for Distraction & Misdirection
What would we accomplish if we didn’t distract ourselves with our dissatisfaction of other people? Would we heal, find true deliverance, really grow? Who would we become if we focused on ourselves without the excuse of what someone else did to us?
Now I’m not making light of the trauma that we endure at the hands of broken people but what I am saying is God wants to deal with you for the sake of your destiny. When you refuse to focus on yourself and instead point the finger at them, you become the casualty and a disobedient child. Neither is good for you. We can’t focus so much on others that we miss the lesson in ourselves. That’s the trap of distraction and misdirection.
I wasted so much time last year focused on what I felt like other people were doing to me. I was so busy trying to fix that thing in them that I was avoiding addressing it in myself. I was so distracted that I delayed my healing, trying to get them theirs. It drove me to my wilderness because I was avoiding God’s instruction to grow in the direction He wanted to take me all to try to go back and get them. I was holding on so tightly to other people that I had let go of God.
What I See Clearly
Our relationships are a sign. Who we have surrounded ourselves with can be an indication of our health. The situations we frequently encounter are a hint of what we are attracting. Like attracts like. It’s not just that things are happening to you. Flip it. What are you attracting?
When we think about it this way, we see our responsibility. What in you may have attracted this person, this situation, this behavior? I have learned that for something to successfully affect me, it has to find a place in me. Like with Jesus being tempted, the devil doesn’t succeed in distracting, impacting, or tempting you unless what he’s bringing can find a connection point in you. That’s why he wasn’t successful with Jesus. The devil tried, but he could find no place in Him. That means to tempt, deceive, confuse, scare us, the devil must find a place in us that partners with and allows these things to live. He’s looking for a conducive environment.
So how do we address this? I believe that brokenness attracts other broken people. Instead of healing, sometimes we choose to protect our broken places. We hide them, excuse them, and find others with them to justify keeping them. We have to choose to face our own brokenness and do the work to heal, knowing that we may not be able to do it alone. Christian counseling, prayer, deliverance- all are sometimes needed to truly heal.
But a shift is required too. Just like an alkaline environment promotes health in our bodies because disease can’t exist there, we need to change our environment spiritually. So what changes your atmosphere so lies, deceit, confusion, fear, anxiety can’t exist? Truth, Presence, and Power. The truth of God can set you free. God’s Presence can bring healing, deliverance, clarity, and so much more of what you need, and walking in His Power can empower you to live life on the level He wants for you. We need all three to leave the wilderness and make it to our Promise Land.
I Created a Pseudo-Savior
It’s our wounds that create our wilderness. Any unhealed places in us are there only because we’ve refused to allow God to be our Savior. (I don’t think I’ve ever said truer words). Our need to save ourselves and create our solutions is what drives us in the opposite direction of the Promise.
What I See Clearly
Nothing can force us out of the place of promise. Nothing can steal our destiny. We choose to let it go and leave it. We partner with our destruction by choosing to disqualify ourselves. How? We reject the Savior and try to get it ourselves, but the Promise can’t be stolen. It’s a gift from our Savior.
I once heard Apostle Jonathan Ferguson say this, and it rocked me. Anything we want without God’s process is an idol. Wanting the promise without the process is wanting the blessings without the Savior. These are traits of idolaters, but how does a child of promise become an idol worshiper? We allow a lie to take root and harden our hearts. We believe the siren song that something else will save us, and we follow it to wherever it takes us.
Who or what are you treating like your Savior? A person, a romantic relationship, money, success, your work ethic, a plan, yourself? We don’t accidentally end up in the wilderness. We run there chasing what we think we want when we decide we won’t do it God’s way. So many of us are destroying ourselves from the inside because we believe the wrong things are the keys to building ourselves up. You can’t save yourself when you’re your own worst enemy. And when you have decided not to do things God’s way you become an enemy to the promise you are attempting to pursue.
So, here’s the question at the root of it all. What made you believe God wouldn’t save you? Name the lie. What did you attach your heart to instead of attaching it to God? For me, it was my plan. I thought God told me something, so I created a whole plan around it. Even when I saw things that made me question the validity of what I thought I heard, even when I heard things that I knew were God that contradicted my plan, I held on. Not because I truly knew it was God, but because I didn’t want to be wrong. I had been wrong before, and everything in me was trying to avoid feeling that again. I was drawn to the wilderness because my heart was more attached to avoiding the past than pursuing the future God promised me.
Fear drove me to the wilderness, but the shame and guilt of being wrong kept me there. My need to be right and not look foolish outweighed my need for a Savior so, I extended my time and delayed my lesson.
A Message for You
Remeber these three things.
- Forgive yourself for the mistakes you made. Forgive yourself for knowing better and not doing better. Stop trying to save yourself and allow God to be your Savior.
- The process to the Promise may look riddled with failure, but you fail only if you don’t learn. Don’t give up on the process. Keep going, and you’ll become sure of who you are, who you serve, and what is yours. You become sure confronting your doubts, not avoiding them.
- I hate failing in front of an audience, but I have learned the danger of isolation when you’re pursuing the promise. You have to be careful who you surround yourself with, but there are people God has placed in your life that are meant to help you. Resources for wisdom, encouragement, clarity, and so much more. Cutting them off is cutting off valuable resources, protection and can hinder God’s ability to help you. Let people be God’s hands, feet, and voice to you.
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
If the first be holy. If the first… be… HOLY. That’s the thought that kept ringing through my head while writing this blog. Although this month was hard, I believe God pulled back the covers in my life to uproot some things, and that gave me the gift and opportunity to start the year from a purer, holier place. And it sets the rest of my year up to follow that path. I want the same for you.
Allow God the freedom to dismantle, uproot and remove anything in your life that is contaminating the holy atmosphere you need to pursue the Promise. Let Him take out anything that causes you to settle, be distracted, accept a pseudo-Savior, or run to the wilderness. Removing these things purifies you and creates an atmosphere where favor grows, goodness comes, and abundance lives. We all could use a whole lot of that.
I want healing for you. I believe you have what it takes to take an honest look at yourself and truly allow God to deal with what you see. You’re strong enough, and He’s loving enough to hold you together as He breaks you in all of the right places. He loves you, and He pursues you, even to the wilderness, even through your rejection of Him and audacity to create pseudo-Saviors. God will pursue you but not forever. Don’t make Him chase you because you don’t have the time to waste running and avoiding the life you were created for. This is your year. This is your season. Leave the wilderness and go to the place of your promise. It’s yours, so go get it.
