Where Your Warfare Is, There Will Be Your Inheritance

Your greatest places of warfare will become your greatest places of inheritance! This is the phrase the Holy Spirit spoke to me in the fall of 2014 while I was meditating on Psalm 2:7–8.

Reading this Psalm, we join David in witnessing a day when nations will rage, kings will plot, and a generation will declare open war on God, His Word, and His plan. David calls it vain. The Father laughs and confidently declares that no devil or nation or conspiracy of nations will be able to overthrow His eternal plan to give all nations to His Son from His Mount Zion. And then we are drawn far from the chaos, confusion, and craziness of the day into the place of intimate intercession between the Father and the Son. The Father declares His affection over His Son and in essence says, You see those nations raging out there? Ask Me for them, and I’ll make them Your inheritance.

Right when I read this phrase and connected these dots, the Holy Spirit made it so clear to me that in the same place the enemy released the greatest assault (namely, Jesus’ eternal destiny of ruling from Mount Zion) is where Jesus will receive the deepest inheritance from the Father. Likewise, our greatest places of warfare will become our greatest places of inheritance.

On March 16, 2013, our family experienced the greatest assault on our inheritance in the sudden death of our son, Josiah Nash Russell. We called him Nash after the intercessor Daniel Nash, who co-labored with Charles Finney during the Second Great Awakening. After having three beautiful daughters, my wife and I had received several prophetic promises that we would have a son. On June 26, 2012, that promise had became a reality when Nash was born.

After nine and a half months of experiencing unprecedented happiness over our son of promise and three stunning daughters and doing life and ministry together, the floor fell out from below us. One day while I was on a ministry trip in London, England, and my wife and children were in Arkansas visiting family, my wife put our son down for a nap—but he didn’t wake up; he passed away in his sleep. After three hours of being unable to get ahold of me, she finally did. I was on the next flight home to begin the most gut-wrenching and painful season we’ve ever walked through as a family.

Over these last five years, there have been times I did not know if our marriage was going to make it (or our family, for that matter). But God, in His kindness and faithfulness, has kept us. In addition to His own faithfulness, He has given us five life rafts—five psalms of David that have helped us interpret pain and sorrow through the Word of God. One of these is Psalm 2, that strengthened me to believe for inheritance when everything around told me differently.

The enemy sought to steal, kill, and destroy us. Yet I clung to two things: I’m God’s beloved son in whom He is well pleased and this is not the end of our story—God has an inheritance for me and my family. As we made the daily decision to come out of the chaos and confusion of what was surrounding us, lock eyes with Father, and cling to His affections and dreams for our lives, we were strengthened to survive another day.

Here we are, five years later, still clinging to God and each other, believing that the promises that He has declared will come to pass. He has carried us on eagle wings through an intense season. Though we aren’t there yet, we choose to wake up every day and believe that “what He had promised, He was also able to perform” (Romans 4:21). It’s been a messy journey, but we have chosen to not quit. And we are truly confident that if we don’t quit, we win.

I believe that many people can identify with some kind of loss or trial that has shaken them, their marriage, or their family to the core—and it has changed them. We need more testimonies of people who are clinging to God’s promises as they walk through intense seasons of pain and loss that give courage and hope to others to keep going. If God can carry my family and me through such great pain, He can carry anyone.

Where are you struggling to believe God’s promises?

To learn more about Corey Russell’s journey through tremendous pain and the hope he received, we recommend his book Inheritance: Clinging to God’s Promises in the Midst of Tragedy. It highlights promises from five specific psalms that will help readers discover how the Good Shepherd heals His people, makes us into shepherds after His own heart, and calls us to believe in a God who turns the worst circumstances into a profound and eternal inheritance. Learn more >>