In the previous post we began looking at 40 characteristics of the Joshua Generation, and today we are looking at the next 5.
6. The Joshua Generation will be men and women of faith, who speak and live by the word of God.
That was the difference between the generations: being able to speak – and live – the words of faith. In spite of opposition, Joshua and Caleb spoke out the promises of God.
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it” (Num 13:30).
There is going to be plenty of opposition to come. Most of it will be religious opposition, because the institution of the church is out to rob the true church of authority and power. There is going to be warfare. It has taken place before: whenever God starts to do something new and fresh, whenever He starts to pour out His Spirit in a new way, the previous generation opposes it because they do not want to give up control.
But you cannot control this: you have to go with what God is doing. The Joshua generation will not be into control: as we have seen, they will be gentle and humble of heart. We need to be men and women who are willing to live by faith and are unashamed to speak out the truth, challenge people’s understanding, and challenge the doctrines and mindsets which have robbed people of their true inheritance. Almost inevitably this is going to cause trouble, but we have authority, and we are going to see people rescued from those things.
7. The Joshua Generation will have (and operate in) a militant spirit, and will fully follow the Lord.
But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully… (Num 14:24).
If you look at how Caleb entered the Promised Land, he was saying, “Bring it on! Give me the land of the giants, because I’m going to go in and take it”. And even when he was in his eighties, he was still strong to go in and out to battle and to war. He was still overcoming. The Joshua generation may have people in it who are 80, 90, or over 100. It is not about age, it is about attitude. They have a different spirit, a militant spirit – as Jesus said, it is the violent who take the kingdom by force.
It is a breakthrough spirit. These are people who are willing to be breakers, who will break things open so that others can come in and receive. That is what God is calling us to do, and to follow Him fully (not partially). It will take a militant breakthrough spirit to push through into the dimensions to which God is calling us, and we need to be prepared for that.
8. The Joshua Generation will be sensitive to and feel grief over sin.
We do not look back at a previous generation and say, “Well, tough on them, they have missed it”. We look at people and see they are still needing encouragement to come in. Over the church in general we have to have an attitude of intercession, an attitude of standing in the gap. Not an attitude of pride, but of willingness to do what we can to see more and more people drawn in.
And where we see the church as an institution in sin, our spirit needs to be moved to act:
Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes (Num 14:6).
When the others said, “We are not entering in”, they tore their clothes as an expression of sorrow and of intercession for them. That is how we need to be.
9. The Joshua Generation will be men and women of the Spirit
So the LORD said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit” (Num 27:18).
We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be baptised in the Holy Spirit in fullness, and to be so continually. It is not a one-off experience: we need daily to be filled, to be overflowing, and to be operating in the dimensions of the Spirit. In the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We need to go up to whole new dimensions of the glory that is manifested through the Holy Spirit.
I did a teaching about the five rivers that are present with us. We can enter into those rivers and be rebaptised into our born-again experience, into our baptism in water experience, into our baptism in the Spirit experience, into our baptism of fire experience, and our baptism of glory experience. We need to continually enter into each of these because our ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit is going to take us to higher realms. He is willing to reveal things to us, because He is the Spirit of Truth who is ready to disclose those things that are to come.
If you want to discover and understand and enter into that whole realm of the Spirit, you can read and meditate on John chapters 12 to 17. Those chapters are all about being connected to and flowing in the Spirit of God, and there is so much more than we know, waiting for us to uncover and experience.
10. The Joshua Generation will be chosen, anointed and commissioned by God for the task.
It was several years ago now that God just gave me a series of four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. I shared them with some of you at the time, but I didn’t fully understand them or what God intended by them. As I have kept those words in my heart, He has continued to give me revelation of them and I have prayed over people to receive new and fresh mantles of authority.
In fact I have been to the Mantle Room in heaven and seen row upon row of mantles of authority and power, waiting to be conferred on people. Some are the mantles of saints from previous generations, people like Smith Wigglesworth and Maria Woodworth-Etter, who have carried something of that authority in the supernatural realm. Many of those mantles are about to be released.
Some of the wells of past generations are going to be unblocked and are going to flow again; but also there are be new wells to be dug, and new mantles released, new levels of authority to be taken up. People are going to be exercising authority and doing things that today you might find it hard to even imagine or conceive of. They will need to do so if they are to be victorious in the battles which are going to take place. They will include some of us: because those are battles we may have to fight. We are going to need to be anointed, because we are chosen, and we are going to be commissioned.
Investiture is just the first part of that commissioning process. I remember watching Prince Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales many years ago on TV. But although he has been invested, he is still only the heir to the throne at the moment. He is still the prince: he is not yet King. There is more to come for him. And there is more to come for us: God will give us revelation of what that is.
Lay your hand on Joshua; and have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and commission him in their sight. You shall put some of your authority on him… (Num 27:18-20).
God is going to release more of His authority to His people. We will be commissioned to enter into a further dimension of our inheritance, our Promised Land.