You know you think like a slave when … you think you have to earn everything from God.

I was reading the story of the Israelites being freed from Egypt (Numbers 13:1-31). They were promised a new land of abundant blessings and freedom. All they had to do was take a two week journey across the desert and then work with God to take the land.

Here’s the truth, even though the Israelites were physically free their minds still thought like slaves. They had been in bondage for 400 years and over that time they had developed slave thinking that kept them from walking in the blessings God wanted to give them.

The two week journey through the desert turned into a 40 year journey living in the desert. Why? One reason is that they couldn’t transition from thinking like slaves of Pharaoh into sons of God.

In Numbers 13:2 it says, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites”. God was going to work with them in order to give the Promised Land to them.

The Israelites could never get over the fact that God was going to give them the land. They were so used to having to fight for everything from their Egyptian masters in order to survive. So when the Israelites saw the obstacles of giants in the land and the fortified cities they knew they could never defeat these things so they gave up. The sad thing is that they weren’t the ones going to do the defeating. They only had to walk with their Father who was going to do it.

They didn’t understand that Sons receive by virtue of their position. Yes, sons have lessons to learn about being good sons, but a son of a King never has to worry about survival. They couldn’t understand that someone greater than them was willing to give something to them when they didn’t earn it.

What has God – your King – promised you? Are you trying to get it on your own even though God promised it to you? Do you think it is up to you to make everything happen? You do have a role to play, but in the end it’s your Father that is going to have do the defeating.

Ask God to show you where you think as a slave and not as a son. Ask God to remove this mentality from your thinking in order to live in your promised land.

It’s much easier to take fortified cities with God on your side.