Attitudes to inheritance...

I've been reflecting recently on the subject of inheritance. Not the sort of inheritance that you get when someone dies - like money or a house - but the sort of inheritance that God has prepared for us, an inheritance that can be both physical and spiritual.

My thoughts were prompted by my daily reading in the book of Joshua, a part of the Bible where we read about how the people of Israel entered into and took possession of their "promised land." This morning, for example, I was struck by the passage where Joshua asks the Israelites: "How long are you going to wait before taking possession of the remaining land that the Lord has given to you?" (Joshua 18: 3)

The nature of the question suggests that there has been a level of passivity on the part of some tribes. (In fact, there were seven tribes who still hadn't claimed their inheritance at this point in the story.) The question also implies that it's possible for God to have already given us things, but for us not to have taken possession of them yet - not to have made them fully ours.

In the previous few chapters, we gain some more insight into the different possible attitudes towards inheritance:

1. There's a recurring pattern of tribes being given land, but failing to drive out the Canaanites in order to claim it. (Josh 16 vs 10, Josh 17 vs 12 - 13) The land was theirs in theory, but they didn't put in the hard work to make it theirs in reality.
2. Then there was the tribe who complained that they didn't have enough land (Josh 17 vs 14 - 16) but their own fears and feelings of inadequacy prevented them from conquering giants in order to gain more land.
3. In contrast to this, there were some sisters, daughters of Zelophehad, who had not been given an inheritance, simply because they were female. Not content to settle for this, they took action and came to Joshua with a plea for land to be allocated to them.

I want to be like those women, who speak up for their inheritance, rather than like the others who allowed fears, laziness or compromise to hold them back.

So, back to chapter 18. If these seven tribes still hadn't claimed their inheritance, where were they living at this point? I suppose they were living in and enjoying the inheritance of other tribes. And many Christians do that today: they enjoy the revelation entrusted to their pastor, or they share the ministry entrusted to their team leader. That's not wrong in itself, if you know that your calling and inheritance are the same. But it can also be the lazy option if it prevents us from claiming other territory that the Lord wants to be ours. Joshua called on these tribes to explore the land, to write down what territory still needed to be claimed, and to conquer that land as their inheritance.

Read on below for more thoughts about inheritance...