Will You Stand On God?

God spoke to Moses: “Send men to scout out the country of Canaan that I am giving to the People of Israel. Send one man from each ancestral tribe, each one a tried-and-true leader in the tribe.” So Moses sent them off from the Wilderness of Paran at the command of God. All of them were leaders in Israel, one from each tribe. We went to the land to which you sent us and, oh! It does flow with milk and honey! Just look at this fruit! The only thing is that the people who live there are fierce, their cities are huge and well fortified. Worse yet, we saw descendants of the giant Anak. Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites are established on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan.” Caleb interrupted, called for silence before Moses, and said, “Let's go up and take the land—now. We can do it.” But the others said, “We can't attack those people; they're way stronger than we are.” They spread scary rumors among the People of Israel. They said, “We scouted out the land from one end to the other—it's a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge. Why we even saw the Nephilim giants (the Anak giants come from the Nephilim). Alongside them, we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.” [Read Numbers 13: 1-33 The Message Bible]

In Numbers chapter 13, God told Moses to send out a leader from each of the twelve tribes of Israel to spy out the land that He had promised their forefathers. They went and spied out the land and saw that it was indeed as God said it was -- “We went to the land to which you sent us and, oh! It does flow with milk and honey! Just look at this fruit!” However, ten of the spies came back with a bad report -- “the only thing”. The only thing” being there were giants in the land. It was not only that the descendants of Anak or the Amalekites were giants; it was also the fact that the Israelites had a wrong perception of themselves and of God. There are several meanings of perception, one of which is “a mental image” and another “consciousness” [“the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself”]. They perceived the giants as threats and felt within themselves that they were like grasshoppers and that the giants perceived them as grasshoppers.

After the death of Moses, Joshua is being prepared by God to take the Israelites into the promise land. Joshua secretly sent out two spies to once again spy out the land. They went to the home of Rahab, the harlot, who hid them in the roof of her house. In Joshua 2:8-11, Rehab spoke to the spies before they went to sleep that night. Her words to them were “I know that God has given you the land. We're all afraid. Everyone in the country feels hopeless. We heard how God dried up the waters of the Red Sea before you when you left Egypt and what he did to the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan, Sihon, and Og, whom you put under a holy curse and destroyed. We heard it and our hearts sank. We all had the wind knocked out of us. And all because of you, you and God, your God, God of the heavens above and God of the earth below.

So here it is, while, the ten spies perceived themselves as grasshoppers, the people living in the promise land were even more afraid of the children of Israel. In other words, their perception of themselves stopped them from entering into the promise land.

What has God promised to you, that you are allowing your perception to interfere with the promise? God may have told you that you are going to start your own ministry, and/or business. He may have told you that your marriage will be restored; your relationship with your children is reconcilable. God may have even told you that you will smile again, sing, dance, run, and even laugh again. Don’t allow what has happened in the past to cause you to miss out on what God is trying to do in your life right now. God wants to use you mightily to show forth His glory and love for all mankind in the earth. While your adversary, the devil is showing you mental pictures of failure and defeat, know that you will receive all that God has promised to you. You will have that ministry, business, relationships, etc. Yes, you will smile again, you will love again, you are all healed -- if you would only believe and stand on God’s promises.

I encourage you today to not allow your perception to cause you to shy away from the promises God has made to you. He has already blessed you in the spiritual realm so that you can be a blessing and make an impact for Him in the natural realm.

Prayer: Father, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I take hold of the promises that You have given to me and choose this day to stand until I see the manifestations of them, amen.

Originally published May 1, 2010