Soul Dispossession

Dispossess  –  dɪspəˈzɛs/   verb

deprive (someone) of land, property, or other possessions.  syn.- divest, strip, rob

 

 Feeling slighted by something taken from you?

 

Reading in Numbers 20-24, how the Israelites “camped… journeyed…set out…and dispossessed…” peoples of their lands by God’s hand, is disturbing and seemingly cruel.  There they were, the new kids on the block, barging in on someone else’s territory. What right did they have?

 

Well there’s a bigger story going on that stretches back centuries before, when God put His hand on Abraham, from a godless nation and called him out, dispossessed him so that he could eventually possess (centuries later through his descendants).

 

It is God who is doing the dispossessing.  His inalienable laws had been defiantly ignored and spurned.   Child sacrifices, unutterable abuses and atrocities reigned.  So He was on the move to reclaim His ways and show the right way to be human.  And He chose humans to represent Him.  That was a huge risk because it didn’t always go the way He desired. It put His name to shame, yet He patiently worked His plan.

 

Though the battle is the Lord’s, we still have to step into the land and use our swords with skill.  That’s what the wilderness training is all about.  Choosing the right battles; the battle to believe with courage and not shrink back because of difficulties. To dispossess the enemy of what is ours; rather than focusing only on trying circumstances like God’s people in the time of Hosea:

 

“Although I trained and strengthened their arms, yet they devise evil against Me.” Hosea 7:15

 

We’re ushered into this world that is ruled by forces that work at taking our identity, our hope, our freedom and our creativity.  So we are called on to go into the lands of our souls to dispossess and repossess God’s territory.  Just as the Israelites had to go into battle together with God, so we go in to take back what has been stolen, killed and destroyed (John 10:10).

 

God calls us out, to call us in.  He calls us to dispossession (taking what the enemy has stolen), to call us into possession of real life.

For me, self-doubt can get in the way of walking in courageous faith.  I am joining Him in dispossessing the enemy of his pull in this area. And finding this is a mercy to keep me depending on Him.

 

• What area in your soul needs to be dispossessed (or taken back)? Dignity, value, belonging, joy, freedom from fear or bitterness, faith?
• What are you demanding that God hasn’t given, keeping you from contentment?  Could that demand be taking the place of what He wants to give?
• What might you need to repossess by the power and authority of your Creator and Redeemer?

 

“Abundant life in not abundance of blessing, it is abundance of power to live and love [in our messy world]; to put God on display in our difficulties.” Larry Crabb