[picapp align=”center” wrap=”false” link=”term=promises&iid=1212033″ src=”d/5/4/3/Taco_Bell_Floats_175e.jpg?adImageId=10693265&imageId=1212033″ width=”380″ height=”248″ /]Do you remember the “promise” of a free taco for everyone if Mir fell from the sky and landed on the ‘Bell’s sea-based target? I do, and I actually know people who “had their hopes up.” It was, of course, foolishness. In all honesty, that is how much of the world understands the Christian expectation of God’s tangible work in life.

One of the great struggles of our existence is negotiating the tension between God’s statements and our perceived reality. There are currents in American religious life attempting to destroy this tension by declaring humans capable of speaking into existence their own reality (by faith or other means) which, in the end, leads to disappointment for all but a few. Most Christians simply accept whatever they see presently, unaware of the grand prize waiting and within their grasp.  They talk a good taco, but live in the “real world.”
 

When God commissioned Joshua to complete the task originally given to Moses, the divide between what God declared and Joshua’s present reality seemed to be wider than even the Red Sea.

God told Joshua that every place he walked belonged to him, but Joshua had yet to enter the land of promise.  Enemies bordered every side of the land Joshua currently held. God told Joshua the limits of his (and Israel’s) inheritance were already established far beyond what his eye could see or his mind comprehend. Joshua didn’t even have a permanent place to rest his head that night. God told Joshua that no human opposition would prevail against him even as Joshua dealt with the reality that it was human opposition that cost him forty years of living in the wilderness of unfulfilled promises.

Joshua perched on life’s edge, but did not despair. A generation before, God told Joshua he would enter the land of promise. God stayed with Joshua, preserving his life and vigor. God never failed him in time of need nor abandoned him in time of struggle. The truth of God’s past revealed character, infused Joshua’s present.

And so it is to this day.  What prize awaits you, faithful friend?

 “I promise you what I promised Moses: ‘Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you—from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites.’No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.” (Joshua 1:3–5, NLT)