When God’s got a new chapter of life for us to move into, we don’t always move into it straightaway. Sometimes that’s because we’re pretty comfortable where we are and we don’t want to take the risk of moving into something new. We begin to question whether God’s really calling us so we often decide to wait a bit longer before taking that step. And at other times we avoid what God’s calling us to because we’re feeling burnt out. We’ve been doing so much that we don’t feel we can take on something new just yet. Or we might try to wait until we think things are ‘just right’ before taking that next step. The Israelites were feeling a lot of these things too. God had given them land to take, and they weren’t taking it. The people of Joseph complained that the land they’d been assigned was going to be too small and that they’d have to fight the Canaanites who were strong and had chariots of iron (have a read of Joshua 17:14-18). Joshua ended up asking: ‘How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land…?’ God knows when we’re ready for something new. The Israelites experienced that when God told them: ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and take your journey’ (Deuteronomy 1:6-7 ESV). If God’s telling us that we’ve stayed too long in a place or situation, then we need to listen to His guidance and not be slow to move into that new chapter. Let’s be proactive and go and ‘take possession’ of that new chapter He has for us.

What now?
Get a notebook and write down all the things you feel are stopping you doing what God’s calling you to do. Then turn over the page and resolve to start a clean, new chapter of your life.