‘This was their report to Moses: “We entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer it!”
But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them, we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”’ Numbers 13:27-28,30-33 NLT
When Moses asked twelve (12) men to search out the land God had promised them, he was not acting out of his own accord. He had received an instruction from God and acted on it, and that’s faith. As the story narrates, the men went out and searched the land only to come back with two (2) different reports. Fear and anxiety overwhelmed some of them, whilst only two (2) other men had faith in God. The people then had to choose whether they would go forward to occupy the land or choose to stay paralyzed.
Imagine God had brought His people out of bondage, fed them in the desert, gave them water from a rock, turned bitter water into drinkable water just for them, and yet they still did not believe. And because they did not believe they did not receive the promise. The bible tells us that all men who came back with a bad report were struck down and died, whilst the rest of the people who spoke rebelled against the good report did not receive the promise. Their separation led them to try to make things right with God in their own strength by going to Canaan before it was time; God was not with them.
Even having been delivered out, they still did not see God bringing them into the promised land. They were dead set on their fears and belief system from a life of bondage. They were too afraid even to try it out because they thought they were not equipped for it.
Caleb, on the other hand, came with a different report. Although he had seen the giants, he was more focused on the land filled with milk and honey God had promised. Notice, that he did not ignore that fact; instead, he trusted God’s word and ability to empower them in taking possession of the land. Because Caleb believed, that only he and Joshua got to enjoy the promise among all men of his generation.
Like the Israelites, every day we are faced with the option to either choose to proceed in faith to the place God has promised or stay comfortable in our very own ‘extended season.’ Today I challenged you to remember where God has brought you from. Be grateful for the situations where you know for sure that if it hadn’t been for God’s miraculous power, you wouldn’t be where you are today.
God is asking you, whose report will you believe when at crossroads? Will you believe the truth of His word or the enemy? Whose report will you believe when all you see is discouraging in the exact place God has told you to be. Maybe you moved to a new country, and things do not seem to go as planned. Maybe you are following God’s blueprint to the tee, and yet there seems to be some resistance. Will you choose to believe the report of God who has provided for you in ways unimaginable or what the world is showing you?
Whose report will you believe Prayer
Father, I thank you for the promises you have spoken over my life. Thank you, Lord that it is your will that I live a fulfilled life, it is your will for my marriage to be filled with joy and peace, it is your will that I live healthy and whole, it is your will that I prosper in all things. Today I choose to stand on the promise you have specifically declared over my life. I choose to live by faith and refuse to be deterred by everything else I see or hear in Jesus’ Name, Amen
