THE ALL SURPASSING POWER OF GOD

Joshua 17 v 14-18 gives us an account of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh’s ( the people of Joseph) plea, or shall I rather say complaint ,with Joshua about the unfair allotment of land to themselves.

They attested that they were numerous in number and therefore required more than just one lot as an inheritance that had been apportioned to themselves in the promised land.

Joshua agreed with the merits of their plea. He therefore advised them to go to the forest land of the Perizzites and there, clear ground for themselves. The people of Joseph also chose to vent their frustration and channel their complaints toward the people of Canaan, who dwelt in plains (flatlands).

Although they envied these people’s occupation of these plains, they were terribly afraid of occupying these lands as these Canaanites had a formidable army (sic) with powerful weaponry. We can equate the Canaanites “chariots of iron” to modern day war tanks.

Joshua reaffirmed the people of Joseph’s status as powerful people of God and directed them to clear the forest land, possess it to its furthest borders and in the process of doing so, to drive out this supposedly mighty Canaanite people.

In light of the above, we can clearly identify 2 issues that the people of Joseph had been struggling with namely:

• They were not interested in the “hard work”of clearing the lands and
• They were fearful of the Canaanite people.

If we equate these circumstances to modern day Christian life the 2 aforementioned struggles often rears its ugly head so to speak. Translated to modern day, these 2 principles for me would mean:

People are sometimes not keen enough to make conscientious concerted efforts to forge ahead in areas that require hard work to change their status quo, in areas that the enemy has a stronghold on.

People live a life of fear, terrorized that the enemy is powerful when in reality he is weaker than he purports to be.

Let’s look back at the scripture, supra:

Firstly, the instruction from Joshua to them to go conquer the Canaanite people was an instruction to the people of Joseph to do it single-handedly, in other words ,without the help of the other tribes, considering that other tribes such as Zebulun , Judah etc were probably at their disposal to assist. It was to be an internal effort by the people of Joseph and not a collective one involving other tribes.

Secondly, Joshua affirmed to them what they ought to have known and that is that they were a powerful people who would conquer the enemy.

My take on this is translated to modern day is that sometimes we as Christians downplay the extent of the inherent immeasurable power of God in us. Once we develop our identity in Christ then the realization that what we have (the power of God) is sufficient to bring us out of certain strongholds will become readily evident.

Thirdly they were now in the land God promised would flow with milk and honey. Their inability to take possession of Gods promise was a sign of unbelief. Translated to life application it would equate to Christians who are already in the kingdom but fail to apply faith to circumstances and chose instead to walk by sight.

It is high time that we as sons and daughters of the King become less reliant on reaffirmations and come to the place of full understanding that we are inherently equipped with greatness to overcome the work of the enemy.

God intricately wove us for greatness and success and certainly did not create us for failure. Remember we were created in his image. To function at optimal efficiency in Gods plan and purpose, we need to come to realization that we are destined for greatness and that we have the inherent attributes and characteristics of greatness thrust upon us by God.
We are powerful people!!

Brother Malcolm Mahabeer
Hope Christian Fellowship
Durban