How long will you be slack to go in and possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you? – Joshua 18:3, Amplified Bible

The Bible is saturated with promises made by God to the saints. Like any good father, God wants to fulfill His promises because He wants to give good things to His children (Matthew 7:11). But, God’s plan to mold us into the image of His Son requires us to do something to unlock His promises to us. Oftentimes, we must do no more than choose to obey His precepts, and then He’ll do the rest. Other times, He purposefully challenges us to put a little effort into claiming the promise, not to teach us that we must earn His rewards – which we cannot – but to teach us to trust Him more.

By the time we reach Joshua 18, Israel had spent years destroying the enemies of God and claiming the Promised Land. But in verses 1-3, we find seven of the tribes of Israel still without their inheritances. Was this due to some inability of God to provide? Of course not! It was due to these tribes’ unwillingness to work for that which they had been promised. As commentator Matthew Henry states:

They were slothful and dilatory. It may be they wished the thing done, but had not spirit to stir in it…The countries that remained to be divided lay at a distance, and some parts of them in the hands of the Canaanites. If they go to take possession of them, the cities must be rebuilt or repaired, they must drive their flocks and herds a great way, and carry their wives and children to strange places, and this will not be done without care and pains, and breaking through some hardships; thus he that observes the wind shall not sow, and he that regards the clouds shall not reap, Eccl. 11:4

It takes both diligence and faith to pick up the Sword of The Lord and fight our way through the jungles of life. A lot of times, though, we just don’t feel like fighting, and that’s where slackness threatens our promises. The fight is necessary to mold our character into the image of the faithful and diligent Christ, and that’s why we must step into the fray, whether we feel like it or not. Without the fight, we’d be spiritual couch potatoes, worthless to both The Lord and to others. In the fight, we learn to trust our God, and that’s when God can use us in a mighty way to promote His Kingdom.

Does God want to give us what He promised? Yes. But you get what you reward, as the old saying goes, and God is not interested in rewarding slackness. The next time you feel like doing nothing, remember that you must do that thing which you fret before you can claim your promise. Get up, trudge through the slough, trust God for every step, and receive your promise!