Sure, you can sit with a heart surrendered in a chair on Sunday morning, one metal-framed chair in a long line of a few hundred others and receive the Gospel. You can respond with a raised hand when the salvation offer is made by the guy up front behind the microphone. True repentance. You and God alone know the difficulties of the road that brings the prodigal daughter home to her Father. And as the redeemed sit newly dressed in fine robes, we are assured that the pig pins and wasted everything from the past matter not.
Because God has eyes for the future when it comes to his children.
But, do we?

Does our gaze match our Makers? Are we looking forward in hope, or behind at what’s already been forgiven? Us girls are experts at remembering all we have been redeemed from. We don’t have to look very deep into our souls or too far back into our pasts, to see how great our need is for a Savior. That’s the easy part.

Perhaps the disconnect that keeps us dwelling on the past is that we don’t understand who, what, and where we have been redeemed to? Maybe we believe Him enough for our salvation, but do we believe Him enough to enter into His promise of a great land and abundant living? Not in the future. Not maybe one day. But on this day. Today. Right in the middle of our ordinary, messy, yet no less redeemed lives. Will we trust him enough to inhabit the sublime place we have been called to?

The Israelites believed God for their salvation. They, too, hid underneath the blood of an unblemished lamb and marched with haste out of bondage into salvation’s arms. Just like us. But that’s where their faith stopped. It dried up there in the desert, stagnant and stubborn. They remembered the past, feared the world, and denied themselves God’s redemption gift of lush lands and abundant life. A beautiful, present-day place that was literally within their sight.
Will the same be true of us today?

You and I, redeemed daughters of the King, have a decision to make as well. Will we look ahead in hopeful anticipation toward His promises, entrusting the past to the One who said: “It is finished.”? Or will we allow the world to drudge up what’s already been forgiven and forgotten, and give it permission to multiply fear and doubt in our hearts? Will we wander and make homes in dry deserts, settling for less than who we are called to be? Will we play it safe to blend in with the crowd, or will we believe instead what God says about His redeemed daughters? Will we accept the entire package of our salvation (a salvation that angels long to gaze upon), and live one ordinary day after another, allowing God to multiply them into a complete life that is anything but ordinary, all for His glory?

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10
We have been called into his marvelous light. No more living in the past. No more shadow dwelling. No more quenching ourselves from the fullness of who He is. We, the redeemed, were made for Promise Land living.

Let’s get to it.