From Wilderness Provision to Promised Abundance!

Joshua 5:10-12  Now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho. 11  And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parched grain, on the very same day. 12  Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land; and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year. 

After crossing the Jordan and being consecrated at Gilgal, Israel did not immediately march into battle. Before Jericho, before strategy, before conquest, God brought them back to worship — they kept the Passover. In the very land of promise, they paused to remember the blood. This reveals the order of God: before you fight for what He has promised, you remember what He has already done. Before inheritance is possessed, redemption is honored. The same God who brought them out of Egypt by the blood of the lamb was now bringing them into the land by His faithfulness, and worship anchored this transition.

They were no longer wanderers sustained by miracles in the wilderness; they were now a people stepping into promise. Yet God would not allow them to move forward without first grounding them in gratitude. The Passover reminded them that everything ahead was built on what He had already accomplished. Then something remarkable happened — the manna stopped. For forty years, heaven had fed them daily. Every morning, provision appeared on the ground– supernatural, consistent, and sustaining. But the moment they ate from the produce of the land, the manna ceased. Wilderness provision ended because promise provision had begun.

God was shifting how they lived. The same God who had provided miraculously in the wilderness was now providing through the land itself. The season had changed, and what once sustained them was no longer needed because something greater had been given. When the promise begins, wilderness provision ends. This is a critical truth for people entering revival. We must not cling to old forms of provision when God is leading us into new dimensions of fulfillment. The manna was never the destination — it was the means to reach it. Holding onto yesterday’s provision can keep us from fully embracing today’s promise.

God was not removing provision — He was upgrading it. The land required participation, stewardship, and maturity. It was no longer about gathering what fell; it was about possessing what had been given. The same God was providing, but in a different way, aligned with their new season. Revival carries this same transition. There are moments when God shifts His people from survival into stewardship, from daily rescue into sustained inheritance, and that transition must be anchored in worship and gratitude, or we will misunderstand what He is doing.

Beloved, do not rush past the place of remembrance. Before you step into greater promise, return to the Lamb and honor what God has already done. Let gratitude anchor your heart as God shifts you into new seasons of provision. If something familiar begins to cease, do not fear — it may be the sign that promise has begun. Revival will be carried by those who recognize the season they are in, release what was for the wilderness, and embrace what God is now providing. The God who sustained you before is now leading you into fullness — step into it with worship, and you will walk in everything He has prepared.

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The children of Israel are facing yet another test, this one, even more severe than hunger– dehydration – which, unabated, quickly leads to a miserable death. Yet, now, every day they are also seeing the miracles of God, who is feeding them regularly with manna, and surrounding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Once again, they fail the test, even in the midst of their daily witness of miracles. So even though the test is more severe, the evidence for trust is that much greater.

Is there something about miracles that makes them forgettable? Or is the problem with us? After journeying for a season the children of Israel were faced with hunger — another test. This time, naturally faced with starvation, they murmured against the Lord, AGAIN! You’d think they might begin to put it together that God truly wanted them to trust Him. Apparently not yet. The dire circumstances attacked their mass cerebral cortex (memory) and once again they went into attack mode, bitterly complaining in unbelief. The Ten Plagues, the pillar of fire, the Red Sea walk, the Egyptian chariot soup, none of these connected to the present hunger pangs. Nature trumped super-nature, and sadly, God Himself.

The Apostle Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians 10 recalls the great miracles God performed for the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus. Delivered from Egypt and Pharaoh’s slavery, they were dismayed to discover his maniacal rage pursuing them anew, driving them into a deadly corner and imminent destruction. Humanly speaking, their terror and panic was understandable. With their eyes they could only see the wrath of Egypt succeeding at last to utterly destroy them. In that state of mind, how might they have remembered the consecutive miracles God had wrought against Egypt which had brought them to this very place?

When Ruth pledged her alligence to Naomi and to the God of Israel, it wasn’t based on, “What ifs?” or circumstances. It was a faith rooted in her devotion to Naomi and God even to the point of death!

This season of the Resurrection also occurs during a significant Old Testament feast day, the feast of “Firstfruits” (Hebrew, “bikoreem”). When Yeshua (Jesus) rose from the dead he was the firstfruit of the resurrection. On that day the keys of Hell and Death were obtained by our Lord. The apostle Paul connected the resurrection with the feast of Firstfruits in his letter to the congregation at Corinith. “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

There is a long standing tradition of cleaning one’s house in the springtime – hence the term “spring cleaning”. One source for this tradition is certainly the Jewish Passover (Pesach). Each spring as the holiday approaches observant householders in Israel and around the world perform a meticulous cleaning of their homes, especially to be sure there is no leaven in the house before Pesach begins. Leaven, in scripture, is often a metaphor for sin and impurity; and this season of the year is often a time for emphasizing “spiritual housecleaning”.

I’ve heard so many Christians ask, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit?” As if the Holy Spirit is some kind of power or force that we can control or weild. What we should really be asking is, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?”