By: Svetlana Papazov
You and I are called to great and mighty things. We are irreplaceable ambassadors that bring God’s purposes from heaven to earth.
God has a purpose for us, but there’s a battle against his purposes in the earth. And so many times when we find ourselves in that battle, worry takes over.
Sometimes the battle is so long that it wears us down, but as we see in the book of Joshua, the army led by Joshua still wanted to fight until they saw the victorious reality charted in heaven come to earth.
They walked in audacious expectation, because conquerors focus on God’s audacious purpose, fight for it with audacious resilience and expect it with audacious faith.
Read Joshua 10:12-14
Joshua was a conqueror. Conquerors walk in audacious expectation looking for ways to bring God’s puzzle piece from heaven to earth and actively claim the territory that God has promised to give them and enable them to possess.
Conquerors don’t own the battle; God does. They own the victory!
When we practice audacious expectation we trust God to do what we cannot do. He trusts us to do what we can.
Our walk in audacious expectation is a walk of powerful partnership with God. When we live in audacious expectation the miraculous becomes normative, the extraordinary becomes our ordinary.
This was true for Joshua. He walked in audacious expectation in God’s audacious purpose for him and the nation of Israel and asked for an audacious miracle.
He asked for the sun and the moon to stop, so he and his fighting men could do their partnership responsibility with God in possessing the promised land.
Q1: How do you partner with God in your life? Do you take time to invite him into your dreams and circumstances?
Sometimes we say that we don’t have enough faith to see an audacious miracle, like Joshua’s, happen to us. But It is not the size of our faith but the type of our faith that moves God to act upon his promises for us!
Our imagination is limited by our limited experience of God.
The more we become self-sufficient, the less we have the imagination to believe for unrestricted intervention of an unlimited God.
Q2: Do you go through life settling for less than a victorious living?
God is not a respecter of persons, but he is pleased when we live by faith and expect great things from him. God gives us to the strength to win our battles. It can be hard to remember that with people in our ear, telling us that we can conqueror in our own power. We have conditioned ourselves to think that we do things in our own strength and power.
Yet, Paul tells the church in Corinth that the work that he does was not accomplished in human wisdom nor by his own eloquence or strength.
When we walk in audacious expectation we actively ask for God’s miraculous in our lives so we can accomplish his purposes in the earth.
We walk with a visionary hope in Christ which is: not blind but seeing God’s future for us; confident not in our ability but his and seeing from heavenly perspective earthly realities.
We have human limitations. God is unlimited. If we can stretch ourselves to trust him vs. our own selves then we are set to experience a miracle.
We trust God to do what we cannot do. He trusts us to do what we can. “With God, victory is our right and is always possible if we stay the course knowing that the Lord stands with us and will never fail us!”
It takes an audacious faith with audacious resilience to possess the audacious promise of God.
Q3: What miracle will you believe God for as he is fighting for you?
We walk a miraculous journey on this earth because when all is set and done we are doing real life with Real God.
Reflection: Are you putting your faith and trust in God's plan for you?
Prayer: God, I pray for every person reading this. I pray that they would be encouraged and empowered in their purpose. Teach us to trust you as we continue to move forward on our journey. Amen.
Svetlana Papazov is Lead Pastor and Founder of Real Life Church, President/Founder of Real Life Center for Entrepreneurial and Leadership Excellence, a first of its kind model of church and business incubator that educates in entrepreneurship, leadership and faith praxis, and author of the book, “Church for Monday.”