REFERENCE
Deuteronomy 2:1-3
If you’ve had a particular experience for so long, you can get used to it and forget your assignment, and even lose every desire to go forward. This was the case with the Israelites in their wilderness journey until God came to stir their nest. Although they were at that time out of Egypt and slavery and had passed through the Red Sea and experienced miracles in the wilderness, they still had a ‘Promised Land’ to go to. But there they were, stuck in the wilderness.
Yesterday’s victory, our greatest accomplishment, becomes a hindrance when we remain in a particular place for long and nothing happens. We modify our desire to push for more; start living in mediocrity and accept ‘not good enough’ as ‘good enough.’ But, there is always a place called ‘forward’ in life; and God wants us to continually make the effort to get there.
Turning northward for the Israelites meant leaving desert-living and going forward to possess the land of Canaan – their land of promise. For you, it may mean leaving the familiar (not good enough) to go upward and forward into other spheres of life. God wants you to know that there is more to you, more in you and He has more for you ahead of you; this is the reason He wants you – like the Israelites – to take your journey northward. Go forward – push for progress!
To push means you have to apply pressure to move something into a different location. Hence you have to be deliberate about making progress because nothing happens in life unless someone makes it happen. Therefore to keep making progress, leave the elementary things you’ve always known and press forward towards the future God has for you. Don’t accept the mediocrity around you as normal, challenge it. What you have done in the past is actually an indication that you have the potential to do more. You have what it takes, you only need to take what you have and use it to your advantage.
Furthermore, you must avoid distractions in life because there is no room for ‘excess luggage’ at the top. It is said that, “They who walk, walk with many; those who run, run with a few, but those who fly, fly alone.” Olympic runners don’t wear flowing robes to a race because they don’t want anything to encumber them. Likewise, soldiers don’t live like civilians in order to avoid distractions. In the same manner, you must be willing to leave irrelevant things behind – things detrimental to your growth and development, physically, spiritually, mentally – for things of great value. You can’t build anything of value in an environment full of rubbish (Nehemiah 4:10).
ADDITIONAL STUDY
Psalm 92:12-14, Philippians 3:12-14, & II Timothy 2:4
PRAYER POINTS
+ Pray for a hunger that will make you always strive for the ‘more’ that God has for you in life.
+ Ask for grace to be disciplined as a good soldier in Christ, in order to avoid the distractions that would stunt your growth, thereby slow down your progress in life.
