For the Heart
I was reading in the book of Numbers about when God told Moses to send 12 men of Israel out to explore the land of Canaan that God said he would give them. Numbers 13:2 When you get to verse 26 it begins to give the report on the exploration. Read the report of 10 of the 12 spies:
"We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there... v 31, We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size...we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
What I thought when I read this was that God didn't tell them to go spy out the land to see if they could take it. He already told them he was giving them the land. Whether or not they could take it wasn't even the issue. He just said go look at it.
I think that rather than sending the spies out to see IF they could take the land, maybe God sent them out to see HOW they would take the land. After all, angels weren't fighting this battle -- they were. I think God was sending them out for strategy.
But, I guess at some point they lost sight of the promise. Without the promise of God to hold onto, the land seemed impossible to take. All they could see was the greatness of the land and the people and they totally forgot about the greatness of their God.
I guess it all comes down to focus and fellowship. In our day to day lives we are tempted to focus on how big our problems are and how impossible our circumstances seem to be. But if we just keep our focus on the promises of God we'll always see God as being bigger than our problems. And if we stay in fellowship with him through prayer and reading the Bible we will maintain the focus that it takes to keep God BIG in our eyes.
When God makes a promise you don't have to wonder IF it will come to pass. Just stay focused and in fellowship with him and see HOW he will bring it to pass.
"We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there... v 31, We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size...we seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."
What I thought when I read this was that God didn't tell them to go spy out the land to see if they could take it. He already told them he was giving them the land. Whether or not they could take it wasn't even the issue. He just said go look at it.
I think that rather than sending the spies out to see IF they could take the land, maybe God sent them out to see HOW they would take the land. After all, angels weren't fighting this battle -- they were. I think God was sending them out for strategy.
But, I guess at some point they lost sight of the promise. Without the promise of God to hold onto, the land seemed impossible to take. All they could see was the greatness of the land and the people and they totally forgot about the greatness of their God.
I guess it all comes down to focus and fellowship. In our day to day lives we are tempted to focus on how big our problems are and how impossible our circumstances seem to be. But if we just keep our focus on the promises of God we'll always see God as being bigger than our problems. And if we stay in fellowship with him through prayer and reading the Bible we will maintain the focus that it takes to keep God BIG in our eyes.
When God makes a promise you don't have to wonder IF it will come to pass. Just stay focused and in fellowship with him and see HOW he will bring it to pass.