Author Archives: IGO

May 09 2026
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Just One Minute

At the Edge of Promise

As we become more effective for Christ, we will confront increasingly hardened hearts and overwhelming odds. This can happen even at the cusp of stunning victory. This is a vital lesson we must learn from Joshua 11 to live in today’s troubled world.

Beginning at the Red Sea, the Israelites experienced victory after victory which later included Jericho, Ai, and the forces of the five kings led by Adoni-bezek. At one point, God even allowed Joshua to command the sun and moon to stand still.

You would think that their enemies would have “gotten the message”—that a God more powerful than their gods stood with the Israelites, not with them. But they didn’t “get it,” except for the Gibeonites. At this point, we are told, God “hardened their hearts”—a sure sign of imminent judgment. 

To defeat the Israelites and Israel’s God, the enemies sent an army of “as many people as the sand on the seashore” (the Jewish historian Josephus records an army of 300,000), plus horses and chariots which Israel’s foot army did not have. In the natural, the Israelites appeared overwhelmed by this superior force.

But God told them, “Do not fear, Trust me.” The Israelites had stumbled many times before, but by this time, they had learned their lesson—no more wilderness wandering, no Achans to spoil it for everybody. The Israelites won a stunning victory, 100% destroying the enemy. Now, they could take the Promised Land given by God to Abraham and his descendants.

Don’t we also have a great promise of the Lord, both corporately and personally, of a world “filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14)? This does not mean just head knowledge but experiencing God in every area of life. Ponder what this staggering promise means for you, your family, community and nation!

Over the past 200 years or so—around the dawn of the modern missionary age—we have seen the rise of mighty opposition overpowering that of any previous age. Think of the multitude of “isms” that have reaped folly, havoc and heartache for millions if not billions of people worldwide. We all know the “isms”—secularism, materialism, Darwinism, Marxism, communism, fascism, militant Islamism, Hindu nationalism, plus many more.

These heart-hardened forces hate God and possess formidable natural resources we can’t match. As if it were their birthright, they ruthlessly seize control of governments, schools, families, economies, arts and entertainment and every other part of our cultures. Even many churches have meekly surrendered to the “isms”.

How easy for us to think, “We are grasshoppers in their sight!” How many of us declare, like Caleb and Joshua, “They will become bread for us?” 

The God of Joshua has not changed. He still says to us as He said to the Israelites, “Do not fear, I am with you.” We have resources today (i.e., the cross, the indwelling Holy Spirit and His gifts, the keys of the kingdom) that Joshua lacked. If Joshua and the Israelites won such a stunning victory with less, what manner of victory awaits us when Christ gives us more?

The victory for our Promised Land may be closer than we imagine—if we will take it! Let us not needlessly wander in wildernesses of our own making!

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Apr 10 2026
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Just One Minute

When Heaven Joins the Fight

Whenever we seek to realize God’s promises to us, we will surely face opposition because that’s what Satan always does—oppose God and all who trust Him. Often, he reacts by activating others against us. 

This takes place in Joshua 10 when five kings join forces to defeat the Israelites whom they view as invaders.

In Joshua 9, the Gibeonites saw Israel’s startling victories over Jericho and Ai and realized they were next. To save their lives, they sent representatives to Israel with a white flag of surrender and vowed to become Israel’s servants. Joshua accepted their submission. Adoni-bezek, Amorite king of Jerusalem, got wind of this deal and rallied four other city-states to join him against the Israelites and punish Gibeon for their betrayal. 

In reality, those kings wanted to prevent Israel from claiming what God promised them as far back as Abraham—a futile attempt by Satan-controlled enemies of all that is good. They were not just fighting Israel, they were defying the glory and justice of a holy God. 

God responds to this defiance by assuring Israel He will stand with them to crush these reprobates. What follows is one of the great examples in the Bible of divine/human partnership against evil. While Israel’s army slays the enemy right and left, God hurls giant “stones” at them from the heavens, slaying even more than Israel’s army. Whether this means actual stones or hailstones makes no difference because God can do either or both at the same time.

As the afternoon wears on, Joshua makes a startling decree: he commands the sun and the moon to stand still, allowing the Israelites to complete destruction of the enemy before nightfall.

God promised this territory to the Israelites, and God dramatically delivered on His promises that day. But He also expected the Israelites to do their part, to call on Him in faith expecting Him to deliver. He even allowed Joshua to command the sun and the moon, and they obeyed the word of a man. This miracle did not happen until Joshua spoke the word.

All of this happened centuries before God permanently bestowed His Holy Spirit upon us, the spiritual descendants of Israel (Romans 9-11). Later, in Jesus’ earthly ministry, He commanded winds and storms, healed the sick, multiplied food and raised the dead.

All of this is not just history. There is a profound lesson here for us today. 

Fast forward to the Upper Room just before Jesus’ crucifixion. There, He promised His disciples the Holy Spirit’s presence, even better for them than His physical presence. He told them, “Greater works than I have done you will do” (John 14:12). That evening, He prayed not only for the disciples but also for future generations who would follow Him, thereby bestowing the Holy Spirit and those “greater works” upon them. That’s us!

These astonishing words of Jesus have long intrigued me. Few if any of us, have seen or known those “greater works” of which Jesus spoke. Do they even include commanding sun, moon—and more?

What avenues of divine/human partnership have we not yet experienced that will seal victories over godless foes, take us into our own Promised Lands and ultimately crush the head of Satan forever? May God teach each of us to work those “greater works!”

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Mar 03 2026
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Just One Minute

Poison in the Pot

Would you eat a bowl of soup from a larger pot of soup which you knew contained a teaspoon of rat poison? I know I would definitely have second thoughts! Yet “spiritual rat poison” resulted from Achan’s sin of looting Jericho’s wealth for personal gain (see Joshua 7).

When the Israelites captured Jericho, God banned them from taking anything for themselves.  Jericho’s gold and silver would go into the treasury for God’s glory and ultimately to bless all of Israel, not just one person. To cheat God is to cheat a nation. God meant Jericho’s wealth to bless all, not satisfy one person’s greed.  

God warned that to covet Jericho’s wealth would bring Israel under a curse, but Achan did it anyway. Achan’s act added “poison to the soup” and brought defeat at the next battle for the equally wicked city of Ai. Achan’s violation allowed Satan to get his foot into the door to confuse a whole nation.

Just one person can cheat a church, family, community and nation from the blessings of God through forbidden and deliberate acts. Hidden acts forbidden by God, especially by key people, can render everyone else ineffective, or at least less fruitful than they would be otherwise. God never takes such desecrations lightly. God is patient and kind, but even God has His limits.

God isolated Achan as the culprit in at least five separate steps beginning with his tribe down to Achan himself. By this means of exposure, God was giving Achan at least four opportunities to confess his sin and repent before it finally got to him. But he never uttered a word until he was exposed with the goods. He forfeited every chance for confession—and God’s mercy.

Now he had to pay the ultimate price—not only he but his entire family.  Some people think this was too harsh. The scriptures do not tell us exactly why God did it this way. Were other members of the family willing accomplices helping to hide the forbidden goods?  Proverbs 15:27 tells us that a greedy man brings trouble to his family.

We don’t know for sure his family’s involvement, but this heinous act had to become an example for everyone else. God is good and merciful, but He is also holy and just, not to be trifled with especially when He gives specific commands of what to do or not to do.  

That’s something for all of us to remember when we are tempted to get overly casual and familiar with God. We must never rationalize His specific commands into something else to justify what we would rather do.  

Without naming names, there are Achans within today’s church who have weakened our witness because they have defied the bans of God.  Some of these are in places of leadership and are already being exposed for what they are.

The exposures of the Achans are not over. The Bible tells us that one day, Jesus will present His ekklesia to the Father “without spot or wrinkle.”  

We all do well to periodically consecrate ourselves anew, to renew our covenant relationship with Him, to “come clean” with Him.  Only then can we become effective members of God’s army to take our Promised Land and join with Him to “crush Satan under our feet.”

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Aug 10 2023
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Breaking Tradition

Jesus tells us to pray “thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven.” John, His disciple, tells us, “The Son of God [Jesus] appeared…to destroy the works of the devil”
(1 John 3:8).

In other words, we as Jesus’ followers have marching orders. We are engaged in a spiritual war to regain territory from an illegal occupier, Satan, who stole it from us through deceit. Through the cross, he has no further authority to keep it. The mission involves both angelic and human forces obedient to Jesus, our Commander-in-Chief.

Military operations require an overall plan and objective that unfolds in different phases. The operation depends upon troop flexibility to shift direction and action at a moment’s notice.

Acts 10 exemplifies one of those momentous shifts.

Phase one began with the Abrahamic Covenant. Most Jews came to see this as a covenant exclusive to themselves. Everyone else was regarded as “gentile,” or pagan, though God told Abraham, “Through you all the nations will be blessed.” For most Jews, this part was forgotten.

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, He told His disciples they, the Jewish believers, would take the gospel to the “uttermost parts of the earth,” that is, to the outside Gentile world.

Peter, Jesus’ disciple and apostle of the early church, was a traditional and patriotic Jew. But Jesus wanted him to preach the gospel, not only to a man and his household regarded as outside the Covenant, but who came from among hated Roman conquerors. This Roman officer, Cornelius, had learned to worship the true God, but because he was “gentile,” his faith was regarded as inferior. For Peter to willingly obey this order required a massive paradigm shift.

God required him to abandon 2,000 years of traditional thinking at a moment’s notice. In Acts 10, Peter’s housetop vision (repeated three times) prepared him for his mission, with God commanding him to kill and eat animals regarded as unclean by Jewish law. In the vision, Peter at first refuses this order, saying, “By no means, Lord!”

In the end, Peter gets the message. He obeys God and preaches the gospel to Cornelius and his household. They all commit their lives to Christ and experience the filling of the Holy Spirit, identical to what happened to the blood children of Abraham at Pentecost.

This event is so momentous to Peter and to the Jewish believers that they marvel over it in the next chapter. They are advancing in their faith, but they are still learning about God’s overall plan to destroy the works of the devil and to bring the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. They didn’t have the whole picture, and neither do we. We receive it just one order at a time.

Are we ready to abandon at a moment’s notice beloved and familiar traditions to destroy Satan’s work and reassert Christ’s authority? Are we willing to accept people as fellow believers whose looks and ways differ from our cherished expectations?

As we learn in Acts 10, God still brings blessings to and through the very people we least expect and whom we even despise. God’s love and mercy is greater than our own. His sovereignty is more sovereign than we know. His grace is more gracious, His love more loving.

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