In Joshua 13:1, after many years of labour, bringing God’s people to their rest, at an old age, the Lord told Joshua:
“…Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.”
This is one statement that is capable of disrupting the comfort of anyone who has laboured and endured so much, serving the same One telling him now that he has not done anything yet. This man had led Israel to several victories, crossed the Jordan, and experienced the walls of Jericho fall, what else was there to see, know and conquer?
But it is the Lord Who is speaking – the work is not yet done!
In my few years of walk with the Lord, I have come to realize that with God, progress does not equal to completion and for the Church in our days, this verse is equally a prophetic statement to us because we have advanced in so many ways like having loads of churches springing up and the current global visibility churches, ministries and ministers are having. Yet, like Joshua, the Lord is saying to us that there remains very much more lands for us to be possessed.
We have a generation of ministers and believers alike who have this illusion of arrival, pointing to large congregations, mega meeting attendance, and virality as signs that the Kingdom is spreading. Of course, we can’t deny the progress the Church has made over the years, thanks to the digitalization of almost everything in the world.
However, when we look away from our immediate environment and critically without sentiments, check out our representation of the mission mandate of Christ which is to make disciples of all nations, we will realize how far we still have to cover as a whole.
We have so much villages in Southwestern Nigeria alone, not to talk about other regions and even Africa, where Christ has not yet been preached. There are whole people groups who have no access to a single copy of the Bible in their language – some have never even heard the Gospel once in their own language. We have several millions of young men and women in our campuses and some right under our noses along our streets whose perception of Christianity is horribly distorted, absent, and hostile. Right in the midst of all our building and celebrating, the Lord is still soberly saying to us: there are more lands to conquer.
One error the modern church made a long time ago is that we have successfully treated missions as a side ministry or a department that’s reserved only for a few overzealous believers meanwhile by the standard of Scriptures, missions is not a department but the DNA of the Church.
When Christ was leaving, He never said we should, “Stay and build,” but to “GO and MAKE disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19).
Unfortunately, we have several Churches today that are increasingly growing bigger but not going further. We are expanding in seating capacity but not in missionary footprint. We are known in the city but absent in the territories where Christ is yet to be named.
Based on the general assessment of God concerning Joshua, we see that victory is not the same as completion. Joshua won several and many battles, but he came to a point in life when God had to give to him his work result – he was told that there were still territories left unconquered.
In the same way, the church may have experienced spiritual victories, but until the Gospel has reached every tribe and tongue, our task is incomplete.
Joshua was old, but God still spoke of future conquests. In the same way, no Church or Christian is ever too “mature” to stop being actively involved in missions.
Joshua may have thought the major work was done, but God saw more and the church as well must learn to see missions not from the lens of comfort, but from the perspective of God’s global purpose.
If we are going to take God’s charge seriously, we must make several shifts such as:
1. Repenting from comfort and indifference.
2. Investing in raising, training and sending missionaries and not just church workers.
3. Redirecting resources from decoration to declaration.
4. Collaborating, not competing with ourselves.
God’s statement to Joshua was not a rebuke but a reminder of unfinished purpose and that’s what He is saying to the Church too today. As long as there are lost souls, unreached villages, forgotten territories, and people who have never heard the name of Jesus, we all have work to do.
This is a wake-up call to Churches, leaders, and believers everywhere to arise to the challenge because there are yet more lands to conquer and I pray we rise in obedience, sacrifice, and urgency, until every land is possessed for Christ.
Grace to you!
