“LORD, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”
Psalm 16:5-6 NIV
In California, we lived in valleys that were surrounded by mountains. Here in Florida, we live in flatlands that are surrounded by tropical jungle. Dense and dark looking (at least to this city girl’s eyes) and I shudder to think of what lives there.
The first month we were here I got the opportunity to watch a plot of it being cleared. What seemed impossible slowly materialized before my eyes. Every time I drove by, a little more of the jungle had been cleared, a few more palm trees pulled out. By three weeks into it, it was a bare scarred piece of land that had been stripped clean and was now only walled by the jungle on two sides. It rains every day here in the summer and less than a month later, grass was growing in that empty lot and the land looked as if it had never been a jungle at all.
It reminded me of what my friend, Rene wrote me after she moved to Tennessee:
“I was looking out my back window into the forest, thinking how beautiful it was. I was also looking at how dense it was and that I could not see my way through. It made me think of how often we can not see a way through, but God can. We don’t even know what is on the other side. Is there a cliff, an ocean, a valley?
That day in Streams in the Desert, the verse was Joshua 17:18. “The forested hill country will be yours.” All I could think about is how? It said, “God instructed them (the tribes of Israel) to clear the forest.” It also stated, “Gain wealth from the terraced slopes that are now hidden by the forests.”
I realized that God was saying to clear the forest it needed to be tree by tree, action by action. I also loved that by doing this God will bless you with the territory you are discovering.
To gain His will it is tree by tree.
I have been waiting a lot. So, for me, it meant to take action. To do! I can not stay in my camp among the forest waiting while I tend to that.
It is time to knock a few trees down, and as I do, I also realized things will become clearer. God is going to show me the way.”
Maybe today you feel like the territory God has given you is lacking room to grow in or that it is as uninhabitable as a dense jungle or forest.
I want to encourage you to take hold of the lot you have been given and begin to clear it, tree by tree by God’s strength.
You don’t have to do it all today.
Just tackle the tree that is right in front of you.
Deal with one issue at a time.
Reconcile one relationship at a time.
Be obedient to Him one day at a time.
Trust Jesus to make a way where you can see no way.
It is time to grow. To do the next thing and begin to tackle the land God has given you.
God has already given you what you need to do it.
