Remember: Power

On Tuesday, we left the story of the twelve spies returning from their job scouting out the Promised Land.  They reminded us of the Goodness of God.

They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. (Numbers 13:26-27 NIV)

The story would have continued down a great path had they kept going in that direction.  Unfortunately, though, they didn’t.

But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan." (Numbers 13:28-29 NIV)

Ten of the spies returned to the Israelites scared.  They saw the people who were living in the Promised Land already and got frightened by their size, strength, and fortifications.

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it." (Numbers 13:30 NIV)

Joshua and Caleb, however, weren’t frightened by these things, though.  They didn’t think about the power of the people who lived in that land.  They thought about the power of their God.

But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (Numbers 13:31-33 NIV)

How about you?  When you face people, challenges, or problems that are powerful, are you frightened by the power you face?  Or, do you trust in the power of your God?