GOD’S PROMISE
We are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
—Romans 8:17
The sixty-year-old body of Timothy Henry Gray was found under a Wyoming overpass two days after Christmas in 2012. There was no sign of foul play. No indication of a crime or mischief. A homeless cowboy who had died of hypothermia, Gray was a victim of bad breaks and bad luck.
Except for this detail: he stood to inherit millions of dollars.
Gray’s great-grandfather was a wealthy copper miner, railroad builder, and the founder of a small Nevada town you might have heard of: Las Vegas. His fortune was passed down to his daughter, Huguette. She died in 2011 at the age of 104.
Huguette left a $300 million fortune. At the time of Gray’s death, the execution of the will was tied up in court. As things turned out, the man found dead under the railroad overpass wasn’t poor after all. He may have been worth $19 million.1
How does the heir to a fortune die like a pauper? Surely Timothy Gray knew his family history. Was he in touch with his half great-aunt? Did it ever occur to him to investigate a potential inheritance?
It would occur to me! I would camp on the doorstep of my dear great-aunt. I would turn over every stone and read every document. Wouldn’t you? We’d make it our aim to access our inheritance, wouldn’t we?
But do we?
Let’s talk about yours. Glistening in the jewel box of God’s promises to you is a guarantee of your inheritance: you are an heir—an heir of God and coheir with Christ (Rom. 8:17).
You aren’t merely a slave, servant, or saint of God. No, you are a child of God. You have legal right to the family business and fortune of heaven. The will has been executed. The courts have been satisfied. Your spiritual account has been funded. He “has blessed [you] with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3 NKJV).
You have everything you need to be everything God desires. Divine resources have been deposited in you.
Need more patience? It’s yours.
Need more joy? Ask for it.
Running low on wisdom? God has plenty. Put in your order.
Your father is rich! “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O LORD, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things” (1 Chron. 29:11 NLT).
You will never exhaust his resources. At no time does he wave away your prayer with “Come back tomorrow. I’m tired, weary, depleted.”
God is affluent! Wealthy in love, abundant in hope, overflowing in wisdom.
No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him. (1 Cor. 2:9 NLT)
Your imagination is too timid to understand God’s dream for you. He stands with you on the eastern side of the Jordan River, he gestures at the expanse of Canaan, and he tells you what he told Joshua: be strong and of good courage, for this is your inheritance (Josh. 1:6).
People of the Promise believe in the abundance of supernatural resources. Don’t we need them? Are we not prone to depletions? How often do you find yourself thinking, I’m out of solutions or There’s no way this will work or I can’t fix this?
I recently spent the better part of an hour reciting the woes of my life to my wife. I felt overwhelmed by commitments and deadlines. I’d been sick with the flu. There was tension at the church between some coworkers. I’d just returned from an international trip, and jet lag was having its way with me. We’d received word of friends who were getting a divorce. And then, to top it off, I received a manuscript from my editors that was bloody with red ink. I actually looked for a chapter that didn’t need a rewrite. There wasn’t one. It was a train wreck.
If you could have read my mind, you would have thought you were perusing the textbook for Pessimism 101. My work is in vain. I’m going to move to the Amazon jungle and live in a hut. I don’t have what it takes to be a writer, minister, encourager . . . human being!
After several minutes Denalyn interrupted me with a question. “Is God in this anywhere?” (I hate it when she does that.)
What had happened to me? I was focusing on my resources. I wasn’t thinking about God. I wasn’t consulting God. I wasn’t turning to God. I wasn’t talking about God. I’d limited my world to my strength, wisdom, and power. No wonder I was in a tailspin.
For such moments God gives this promise: “We are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17).
The cronies of dismay, gloom, and dejection have no answer for the promise of inheritance. Tell them, “My Lord will help me. Strength is on the way. The gauge may be bouncing on Empty, but I will not run out of fuel. My Father will not allow it. I am a child of the living and loving God, and he will help me.”
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! (Rom. 8:15–17 THE MESSAGE)
To Timothy Gray we would have said, “Hey, Mr. Gray, you are a descendant of wealth, an heir to a fortune. Get out from under this bridge, and make your request.”
To us the angels want to say:
“Hey, Lucado! Yeah, you with the rotten attitude. You are an heir to the joy of Christ. Why not ask Jesus to help you?”
“And you, Mr. Without-a-Clue. Aren’t you an heir to God’s storehouse of wisdom? Solicit some guidance, why don’t you?”
“Mrs. Worrywart. Why do you let your fears steal your sleep? Jesus has abundant peace. Are you not a beneficiary of God’s trust fund? Put in your request.”
Understand your place in the family. You come to God not as a stranger but as an heir to the promise. You approach God’s throne not as an interloper but as a child in whom the Spirit of God dwells.
One of the most famous stories in the Bible has to do with inheritance. The Hebrews had just been delivered from Egyptian captivity. God led them and Moses to the edge of the promised land and made this offer: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders’” (Num. 13:1–2, emphasis mine).
God did not tell the Israelites to conquer, take, invade, subject, or secure the land. He told them he was giving it to them. Their choice was clear: promises or circumstances? The circumstances said, “No way. Stay out. There are giants in the land.” God’s promise said, “The land is yours. The victory is yours. Take it.”
All they had to do was trust his promise, despite the circumstances, and receive the gift. But they didn’t. It was a bad decision with a forty-year probation penalty. God left them to wander in the wilderness for a generation, until a new breed of followers surfaced.
Joshua was the leader of that generation. Upon the death of Moses, God reissued the promised land offer. “After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: ‘Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses’” (Josh. 1:1–3).
We typically think of Joshua as taking the land. It’s more precise to think of Joshua as taking God at his word. Joshua took the land, for sure. But he did so because he trusted God’s promise. The great accomplishment of the Hebrew people was this: they lived out of their inheritance. In fact, the story ends with this declaration: “Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to their own inheritance” (Josh. 24:28).
Is that to say they had no challenges? The book of Joshua makes it clear that wasn’t the case. The Jordan River was wide. The Jericho walls were high. The evil inhabitants of Canaan were not giving up without a fight. Still, Joshua led the Hebrews to cross the Jordan, bring down the walls of Jericho, and defeat the thirty-one enemy kings. Every time he faced a challenge, he did so with faith, because he trusted his inheritance.
What if you did the same?
Standing before you is a Jericho wall of fear. Brick upon brick of anxiety and dread. It’s a stronghold that keeps you out of Canaan. Circumstances say, Cower to your fears. Your inheritance says otherwise: You are a child of the King. His perfect love casts out fear. Move forward.
Choose your inheritance.
Haunting you are the kings of confusion. Thanks to them, you’ve struggled with your identity and destiny. You’ve bought the lie that life has no absolutes or purpose. Then you remember your inheritance: Truth. Guidance from God. His Word to instruct you.
Choose your inheritance.
Is that to say all your challenges will disappear? They didn’t for Joshua. He fought for seven years! But he knew more victory than defeat.
So can you. It comes down to a simple decision to believe and receive your position as an heir of God and coheir with Christ. “In this world we are like Jesus” (1 John 4:17). We aren’t slaves or distant relatives. Our inheritance is every bit as abundant as that of Jesus himself. What he receives, we receive.
Suppose you are relaxing at home one evening when the doorbell rings. You answer the door to see a well-dressed man who introduces himself as an attorney who specializes in large estates.
“Might I come in and visit with you about a potential inheritance?”
Typically you wouldn’t allow a stranger into your home. But did he say “inheritance”?
You offer him a seat at the table. He produces a document from his briefcase and begins with some questions. “Did your mother come from England?”
“Yes.”
“Was her name Mary Jones?”
“Yes.” Your pulse rate increases.
“Did she settle in Chicago? Work as a teacher? Marry John Smith and die five years ago in Florida?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes, and yes.”
“And are you John Smith Jr.?”
“Yes!”
“Then we’ve been looking for you. Your mother inherited a large sum from her uncle. Now that inheritance is yours.”
“It is?”
“Yes.”
You think, I can buy those new shoes at Dillard’s.
“It is quite sizable.”
Maybe I should go to Nordstrom.
“Probably more than you could imagine.”
Okay, Saks Fifth Avenue.
“You have inherited a gold mine in South Africa. It will take several years to work out all the inheritance, but in the meantime here is a down payment. Twenty million dollars.”
Maybe I will buy Saks Fifth Avenue.
If this is the down payment, what is the entire inheritance going to be worth?
That, my friend, is the People of the Promise question. You are an heir with Christ of God’s estate. He will provide what you need to face the challenges of life. He certainly did for Diet Eman.
Early in the morning hours of May 10, 1940, she awoke to what sounded like the beating of rugs. As the popping continued, the twenty-year-old Dutch girl climbed out of bed and scrambled with her parents to the front lawn. German planes buzzed through the sky and rained bullets upon The Hague. Hitler had assured the people of the Netherlands that he would respect their neutrality. That became yet another of his broken promises.
After getting back inside, the family turned on the radio and heard, “We are at war. German paratroopers have landed.” Diet immediately thought about her boyfriend, Hein. The two had much in common. Both were raised in Christian homes, both were loyal to their homeland, and both were incensed at the German oppression of the Jews.
Not all Dutch believers were. Some advocated for a plan to avoid conflict and trust the will of God. But for Hein and Diet, the will of God was clear. Hein knew the Mein Kampf message. He told Diet, “[Hitler’s] so full of hate, he’s going to do something terrible!” By the end of 1941 the Nazis required Jews to wear yellow stars and banned them from travel. Many were receiving deportation notices to Germany.
Diet was contacted by a Jewish man who asked her for assistance. She and Hein knew that the risk to them was great. If they were caught, it could mean death. But they helped him anyway and arranged for him to go to Friesland to live with a farmer until the war was over.
What began as assistance to one man grew to a plan to help others. The stakes grew higher and higher. Hein spoke of contingency plans, of what to do if he was arrested. In one such conversation Diet sensed an inner voice saying, You’d better have a good look at him. Three days later, on April 26, 1944, he was arrested and carried off to prison.
Diet altered her appearance and identification. Her tactics were not enough. Within a few weeks she found herself in prison as well, where her only hope was the promises of God. One day she used a bobby pin and scratched the words of Jesus into the prison’s brick wall: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end” (Matt. 28:20 KJV).
A few weeks later she, along with many other prisoners, was moved to a concentration camp. There were few rations and no soap, towels, or toilet paper. At times she wondered if she was losing her mind. When she was finally given a hearing, she rehearsed the story she would tell the Nazis, and she clung to two promises she remembered from Scripture: not a hair on her head would be touched (Luke 21:18), and she needn’t fear when she appeared before the authorities (Matt. 10:19). She was allowed to go back to the barracks that day, and two weeks later she was freed.
Hein, however, was in Dachau. One of his fellow prisoners later told Diet that Hein displayed an inner beauty, that he loved life and loved Christ. He became weak at the end, so weak he could not work. He was removed from the barracks and never seen again.
She did receive one more message. Sometime before his death Hein had scribbled a note on a piece of toilet paper, wrapped it in brown paper, addressed it, and thrown it from a window of a prisoner transport train. Someone found it and, amazingly, put it in the mail. The note read:
Darling, don’t count on our seeing each other again soon. . . . Here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. . . . Even if we won’t see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand. And know, Diet, that of every last human being in this world, I loved you most.2
In my mind’s eye I envision young Diet lying in her bed, running her finger across the words she etched into the wall. The prisoners are hungry. Her stomach growls, and her body is weak. But she chooses to focus on this promise, this inheritance: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end.”
I try to imagine the sight of Hein in Dachau. Men with skeletal frames roam about the prison yard. The scent of death is in the air, and Hein knows his time is short. In what must have been his final opportunity to write, he dips a pen in the inkwell of hope and scribbles, “We will never be sorry for what we did.”
Where did this couple quarry such courage? Where did they find their hope? How did they avoid despair? Simple. They trusted God’s great promises. What about you? What message are you carving on the wall? What words are you writing? Choose hope, not despair. Choose life, not death. Choose God’s promises.
You don’t have to sleep under the overpass anymore. You are a new person. Live like one.
It’s time for you to live out of your inheritance.