“Standing on the Edge of Promise” by Judy Webb

It was every little girl’s dream, every son’s great hope. Bouncing on daddy’s knee while tales of the promised land were spun in their growing minds. Talk of their father Abraham and his 12 sons. Talk of the promise of God to give Abraham descendants that would outnumber the stars. He would have a land of promise, a place of blessing where his children would dwell. With tear-stained eyes, Papa would tell of a place where there would be no more angry Egyptian whips on backs, where feet muddied with the making of Pharaoh’s bricks would walk dusty through his own grain fields and vineyards in full bloom. No longer slaves in a foreign land, the people of Israel would return to their own land, to their own God, to their own people. They would build their own cities, they would worship in their own temple. They would be God’s people, established in their land of promise. Every father dreamed of the day he would see his son run free in the promise. Every mother longed to be home.

It came to the moment in history where the deliverer of Israel returned to bring them home. There were miracles and tragedies. The stories they would be able to tell to their children of how God delivered them from Egypt, of how the water turned to blood, the gnats filled the air, the cattle died, the sky went black, and the great mourning of the first-born sons of the Egyptians. The red sea parted as a red carpet rolled out for them to cross right on through the last great barrier between them and the advancing army. God had delivered. He had arrived. Their longing for the promised land was fulfilled. The joy and excitement filled the air. The songs of deliverance were written down for the thousandth generation. The longing heart was given cause to hope again.

After two years of journey, Israel came close to the Promised land. They could see it there in the distance. Their spies went in to survey. Here the story takes a turn, a turn away from their promise. Ten of the 12 spies are terrified to enter into the land. Two of them, laden with grape vines and hope say, “let’s do it.” God’s people, standing at the edge of their dream, walk away. It breaks my heart. Absolutely broken for them. They had dreamed and hoped and when they saw the giants in the land they turned around and walked for another 38 years! God would not allow any of the adults to enter in, except the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, who believed God.

God puts a dream in our hearts. I know he has put a dream in your heart; He has done so in mine. After years on my own journey I believe there are times God brings us right up to the dream and lets us peer over the wall at it, and then turns us around. In my life, I can think of three things God placed in my heart as a hope for my future and placed me on a “40 year journey” to prepare me for the dream. In my twenties I was a youth minster and missionary. I longed for a husband, I’m talking praying thousands of prayers and filling page after of page of why God should give me a husband. So pathetic. My life and ministry were thriving, but that longing to be married was always there in the back of my mind. It was a Godly desire. God had a husband picked out just for me. God wanted to do a work in me to prepare me for my husband.

I was running one morning and God whispered a question, “Why do you want to be married?” and I realized that I had a great fear of being alone, that I would not be able to take care of myself. In that moment, God answered me with the secret of contentment, that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength (Phil 4:13). A release happened in my heart, a complete shift of seeing God as my strength in deeper places. Needless to say, I was married less than a year later 🙂

The second was in my desire for children. It is a godly desire. God had placed a family in my heart. I figured I would be pregnant on my wedding night. I am an optimist, even my blood type is B+. It was 3 years of horrible fertility treatment and wasted money before I would ever get a happy double line on a stick. I got pregnant, without the help of doctors or shots or an IUI. I got pregnant when God had wrestled the desire for pregnancy off the throne of my heart and placed it at His feet. I came to the place where I knew deep in me that being a mom was not my identity. My identity was being a daughter of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The third dream is a look into a place in which I still have some fear. My friend Paula talked me into doing some crazy work out with her. While we were there trying to lift heavy weights (at least 10 pounds), Paula looks at me and says, “Start a blog.” I had loved to write. I had a dream even as I was leaving youth ministry to write. When I write I feel the presence of God. I fill his pleasure and His joy. Paula didn’t know this, she just was like START A BLOG. So I did, because Paula is pretty awesome. I started writing feverishly.

The blog posts went up and I became obsessed with statistics. I mean like I was checking stats several times a day. Some blogs were being read, others not so much. I chatted more than a few times with God about writing for Him and not worrying about the stats. I was going to write for Jesus and not for the approval of man. It was a time in which God allowed me to view over a wall into a place of promise, of ministry, but I honestly hadn’t done the long journey with Jesus in this area to handle living in that land. I pulled out of blogging. God had another journey for me, and I will be honest, it was a very difficult road to come back to the keyboard, back to words, back to smiles while typing because I get to write what God is doing.

Friend, perhaps you have a dream in your heart. Perhaps God has given you a vision, a hope. There may be something that when you do that thing you feel God’s presence welling up in you. You feel His love and joy. Know that the gift of vision is a gift from God. What God needed to do in me was remind me through struggle and grief and joy, that He is always the Promise. He is always the dream. My heart, although it longs to write and be used as His pen here in my tiny space, is really longing for Jesus. When I came to a place of believing God is my longing, I came home.

Dear Jesus, we surrender our dreams to you. We give you that desire that so wells up in our hearts to be used by you. Lord, be on the throne of our hearts. Teach us to live in the land of promise without idolatry. Lord, for all the women reading who are longing for children, please meet them in their tears. Lord, be tender and merciful to the brokenhearted. For all the women waiting on their man, please show them that You care for them. Do the work on the journey that makes them the wife they need to be when he comes. And Jesus, for the ones standing at the edge of their place of ministry, give them humility of heart to enter in to be a blessing. Dear Jesus, thank you for giving us dreams.

Written by~Judy Webb

I am an average girl with an amazing God. I was never that brave, never really outgoing, usually was afraid of new situations. I would often try to hide who I really was in order to fit into a crowd. I was probably on a road that was going to look mundane and ordinary, but God had extraordinary plans for me. He rescued me from the monotony of existence without Him to a great joy and peace in Him. He set my life on a whirlwind adventure as a missionary in Korea and in Germany. I was given the great joy of sharing my life in Christ with teens on many continents. Today I am wife to Jeff, and mom to Zack and Caleb. When I am not playing with my boys or struggling through spelling words, I love to sit in a living room with a group of ladies and just dig into the Word together. I also love to write about the joy I have in Christ and the truth He teaches me. I am a member of Rivertree Church where I help with ladies’ Bible Study.

Tags: devotion, dreams, judy webb, Our City On A Hill, promised land, Soul Food