In the book of Numbers, God gives His people a great promise of guaranteed victory and possession in the land of Canaan. Before they even see it, taste it, and smell it, God tells them what great resources and blessings He had waiting for them. This included houses they did not build, vineyards they did not plant, fields they did not grow, and much more. It was so abundantly appealing – especially after living in tents for forty years in the desert.

Now when you look at this promise from the perspective of Numbers chapter thirteen, it looks like God is leading the people of Israel to “send men” into the land of Canaan to spy out a land that God already promised to give them. Twelve spies go out and ten return with a negative and evil report that the giants are too big to conquer. On the other hand, Joshua and Caleb are the only ones that return with a good report that Israel should act on God’s promises and possess the land. But if we take a moment to look at the story from the perspective of Deuteronomy one, we see that the “spy tactic” was the peoples’ idea, not God’s.

Deuteronomy 1:22-23 says, “Behold, the Lord thy God hath set the land before thee: go up and possess it, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath said unto thee; fear not, neither be discouraged. And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.”

This is really important because this shows that when God told Moses, in Numbers thirteen, to “send men into the land of Canaan”, God was not sending those men on a commission to possess the land, He was giving Israel permission to try out their own ideas.

If you look at the Hebrew translation of Numbers 13:2 in which God tells Moses to “send men,” the Hebrew actually reads, “RELEASE men”, not “send.” The Israelites were trying to get the Lord to approve of their carnal ideas along the journey of God’s spiritual promises.

This cannot be our agenda.

It should not be that when God gives us a promise, we try to scrutinize what He tells us or insert our own ways. We must not develop carnal methods to give our stamp of approval on what He says. On the contrary, when God gives us a commission, we are to walk in that way.

We ought not to perform carnal gymnastics in our relationship with God to make His promises anymore tangible or seemingly amazing. We must act on His promises with spiritual obedience, not fleshly innovations. When we impose our ideas on God’s Word, we end up in the same situation the Israelites did. They had too many opinions in the process, resulting in confusion and unbelief.

That is the fruit of the agenda of the flesh.

On the path of obedience, we must guard ourselves against developing opinions contrary to His Word. When we die to ourselves, we have no opinions, we just have ready obedience.

The call we have in this day is to act on the Great Commission, not the Great Permission. Asking for permission implies that we do not already possess the right to do something. On the other hand, the commission of Christ gave us the right to preach the gospel and be a Spirit-filled witness to our world. We don’t have to ask God for permission to share the gospel and be a laborer in His harvest. He already gave us the commission, we just have to go.

You ALREADY have the right to lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.

You ALREADY have the right to teach that Bible study.

You ALREADY have the right to disciple that individual.

YOU ALREADY have the right to be everything God wants you to be. TODAY.

Let us, therefore, take the land! Possess it! And experience all He has planned for the Church in this end time!

Hector Robles hosts a podcast and bible study channel by the name of Sparrow.Podcast. On a weekly basis, you can find new content regarding the Bible and ministry. He lives and works as an engineer in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, Savannah and they gladly serve at Calvary Apostolic Church.

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