God: Joshua, I have told you your future is good. Are you willing to wait for it?
Joshua: No. How can I live like things are good when the good is coming?
God: (shakes head) That’s not how I see it. If this is where you’re at, there’s good to be had here.
If I’ve led you to this point. Have I?
Joshua: …I think so. Although I veered off years back.
God: […] Am I big enough?
Joshua: …
God: Joshua, I have a question. Which is the problem: not having what I’ve told you you will, or not holding what I’ve already given to you?
Joshua: …um… besides my emotions that I’m really good at suppressing, what am I not holding onto that you’ve already given to me?
God: (shakes head) No. I didn’t say you’re not holding onto it—you’re not holding it. It may be in your backpack, but something should be right in front of you nonstop. What have you kept in your [backpack]?
[…]
Joshua: …joy? Community? Contacts with other people? Today God Taught Me? More projects? Rest? Exercise? What?! I don’t know what you’re driving at.
God: Kiddo, hope. I don’t want you missing the good today. But you twist hope backwards, thinking “that is when I can be happy”. Do you feel bad if you are happy with less than my best?
Joshua: …well, isn’t that insulting? I’ve heard that we shouldn’t stay back and be satisfied with what we have, when you have more in store for us.
God: [(flatly, but not meanly:)] Wow. Completely unbiblical.
Did I celebrate the Israelites when they complained in the wilderness? “Oh, the Promised Land is so good, OF COURSE you’d be unhappy now! Keep that tension and anger, it’ll get you through!”
No. I wanted them to trust me. Not just for the Promised Land, but for the today.
I didn’t just have their provision in front of them.
I had their provision in hand, in the “what’s that”, in the manna.
To a land flowing with milk and honey, with some food with a taste reminiscent of the promise. But it wasn’t the promise.
It was a promise. But not the promise. You’re afraid that if you enjoy now, I’ll get angry, because that must mean you’ll stay stagnant, right?
Joshua: Well… I heard a lot of sermons about moving forward, and not staying stuck.
God: (shakes head) Don’t stay stuck when I’ve told you to move forward. But don’t move forward if I tell you to hold. The Israelites were meant to stay under the cloud until it moved; nobody would’ve been a hero for trudging ahead beyond it. I wasn’t waiting for them to move so I could move, I wanted them to move with me.
(leans in) Joshua, enjoying the present isn’t contradictory to hope in the promise. You don’t know how to hold both: both joy in the moment, and hope for the promise. You have to learn how to hold both; otherwise, you’ll never rest.
Joshua, the Israelites wanted to go back to where I had pulled them out of. That was the issue. If they loved the wilderness, and my provision, and my presence, and then also got excited about the Promised Land, there would be no issue. The children of Israel were not enjoying the present; but they were longing for the past.
The present becomes the past. Enjoy the present while it is present. When it becomes past, be grateful for what I did, understand what I pulled you out of, and enjoy the new present. Not every present is as peaceful as every past; but count it all joy. You can count peace as joy, just as you can count trial as joy.
The reality was, you were just starting your life [when you heard those sermons].
Those messages about “not staying stagnant” were targeted towards people in their forties and fifties who had seen my hand, and wanted the same.
Not wanted my hand again—wanted my hand the same way.
You had never had an experience of my hand [upon you]. [Remembering] What happened six months ago wasn’t you staying stagnant, it was you [being] aware of what I had just done. Yes, there is always more.
But staying under my cloud isn’t staying stagnant. Staying stagnant is staying still WHEN I MOVE.