As believers in Jesus Christ, we are joint heirs with Him.
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As believers in Jesus Christ, we are joint heirs with Him. This means that everything that is His also belongs to us, and every promise God gives in His Word is for us (Romans 8:17). But I’ve learned that it’s one thing to take God’s promises by faith and another to actually experience them.
The story of the Israelites in the wilderness is a good example for us regarding this principle. They were slaves in Egypt when God sent Moses to deliver them from Pharaoh and lead them to the Promised Land He had for them. They had to go through a wilderness to get there, and Deuteronomy 1:2 (AMP) says, “It is [only] eleven days’ journey from Horeb...to Kadesh-barnea [on Canaan’s border; yet Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years before crossing the border and entering Canaan, the promised land].”
It’s tragic that it took the Israelites 40 long, miserable years to reach their destination, and even sadder that in the end, only a small number entered in to the land, along with Joshua and Caleb.
It’s easy to shake our heads and wonder how it could have taken them so long to get to their desired destination. But the truth is many of us have wandered around in our own wilderness, going around the same mountains over and over for far too long.
Just like the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, we were slaves to sin before we accepted Christ as our Savior. And just like the Israelites were stuck in the wilderness after they were delivered from slavery, many Christians are still living as if they’ve not been delivered from their sin, even though Christ has done everything that was needed to set them free from it once and for all (2 Corinthians 5:17-21).