I think we all have a tendency when looking back to think we’d be Joshua and Caleb, but when caught up in similar circumstances in modern times we give a very convincing performance of the other ten.
Why? Because we are so daunted by the impossible circumstances in front of us or so settled in our habit to live in the natural world that we forget that we serve a God who specializes in the impossible and who grants us the supernatural capacity to carry out His work, to tear down the strongholds of this world, to confound the wise and the mighty.
Because, truth be told, our faith is often times as scrawny as the ten spies or the twelve disciples. For the believer the question is no longer, “What must I do to be saved?” but “What must I do to be brave?” And the answer is found over and over in “The just shall live by faith.”
If a black man can talk 200 hardcore racists out of their robes, cannot a white man or woman with the power of the Holy Spirit lead the blind out of Black Lives Matter?
Did not a few friends with mere Christianity talk one of the world’s leading atheists out of his darkness (conversion of C.S. Lewis). Did not a simple pastor with love, patience, and respect lead a lesbian, Ivy-league, feminist, atheist into the family of God? (conversion of Rosaria Butterfield)
When you don’t believe you can be that person, when you don’t believe that you can have that effect on darkness, you don’t really short-change yourself, you sell short the very glory of God, the power of the gospel, the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, and the compelling nature of Christ in his person and his work.
So Believe! Yes, the Canaanites are big. So what, our God is bigger. Yes, Goliath is a champion, but the weak with God are stronger; so pick up the stone. Yes, the Assyrians are nasty, but we serve a God of mercy.
Board the ship. Open the door. Reach out your hand. Turn the other cheek. And be ready to forgive seventy times seven, pick yourself up, and start all over again. Because that’s what it’s going to take.
Let’s do something fine for Christ today.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-ca-film-accidental-courtesy-20161205-story.html
Image: Excerpted: Gustave Doré – http://www.creationism.org/images/DoreBibleIllus/cNum1327Dore_ReturnOfTheSpiesFromTheLandOfPromise.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6970402
