Let me repeat something that I said in yesterday’s devotional that I believe is so incredibly important, which is, “you will never be able to live a life on this earth as a Christian in consistent victory and freedom unless you grasp your co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Jesus. Without understanding these realties, it is impossible to really understand your true identity and if you don’t know who you are, then you will not know the life you are called to live, or the resources that you have that are available to you to live the life you’re called to live.
In the Old Testament, though the land of Canaan was an actual place that was God’s promised inheritance for the Hebrew people, it is also a spiritual type of the Spirit filled Christian life. Let’s remind ourselves why the Holy Spirit fills us. The Holy Spirit fills us for the purpose of immersing us into the life, nature, and power of the risen Lord Jesus. The land of Canaan represents the life of the believer living in victorious union with the risen Jesus, which is the Spirit filled life. The Jewish people came out of Egypt with the promise of an inheritance that God said was already theirs, but they had to go in and possess their possessions. What should have been a few days journey turned out into a 40 year experience in the wilderness, because having spied out the land, the majority of those responsible to make the decision to enter in could not believe God for what He had promised, and therefore did not go in and take it by faith what was already theirs as a fact. It is important to remember that when they came out of Egypt they came out with riches and with the land flowing with milk and honey awaiting them. In the same way, the moment a person becomes a Christian they are already blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, are called to, by faith appropriate and experience everything that is already theirs in Christ.
In Joshua 1:2 – 3 the Lord told Joshua that to experience the land of promise they had to cross over the Jordan and believe God one step at a time for what He had already given them in the land of milk and honey. There were certainly battles to be fought, but God told them that the victory was already theirs and that if they would just trust Him, He would manifest the already one victory day by day. They were called to the privilege of waking up every day and experience WHAT GOD DID!
First things first though; before they ever experienced victory in the land of promise they would have to cross the Jordan. In type, crossing the Jordan is to personally grasp and believe in your co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Jesus, and that you are now in union with his life. It is saying YES to the crucifixion of your old self that was accomplished 2000 years ago at Calvary, and saying YES to the reality that Christ is now your life and is prepared to live His life through you in every life situation by His resurrection power. Again, this immersing into the life of the risen Lord Jesus as your very life is what getting filled with the Holy Spirit is all about. It’s not that you get more than what you already had; it’s that you choose to cross over into the experience of possessing your possessions in Christ.
The first victory that the Jewish people experienced was in the land of Canaan was at Jericho, and their destiny was to go from victory to victory, and glory to glory until all the land that was theirs experientially possessed and enjoyed.
The victorious Christian life is not a formula that can be memorized, or set of principles to be applied. It is the victorious risen life of the Lord Jesus Christ that we are in union with being manifested through us one temptation, one relational moment, one responsibility, and one conflict at a time. If your Christian life to this point has been a series of defeat and discouragement, then I would ask you, “have you crossed the Jordan?” Are you daily tasting of the land flowing with milk and honey (Jesus called it “life and life more abundant)? This is why Jesus rose from the grave is so that you might as a total new creation in Him, experience all that he is for all that you need, in all that makes up your practical life here on earth. Over the centuries, many writers believe that the book of Joshua is the Old Testament type of the book of Ephesians, which calls us to live on earth as those seated in the heavenly places in Christ. Until you are heavenly minded enough, you will never be any earthly good.