Follow the Lord Fully: Part 2

       While Caleb proclaimed of the Promised Land, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” Numbers 13:30,.. “the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.’  So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.  There also we saw the Nephilim ….. and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”  Numbers 13:31-33 
  
       Which report do you think they HEARD?  Of course, the negative one, and this unleashed grumbling among all in the congregation (Numbers 14) and made the heart of the people melt with fear (Joshua 14:8)
         Fear does this; it makes the heart melt and spreads to those around us.  A literal translation would be that they made the heart of the people become demoralized with fear.  Demoralized is defined as 1) To corrupt or deprave, 2) To lower the morale of, 3) To throw into disorder. 
        How often do we allow a bad report and fear throw our hearts, with all our emotions, into disorder?
       Let us once again, and daily, take our eyes off of the circumstances around us, take captive the thoughts that raise themselves up in opposition to God’s truth (all the vain imaginations), and fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.  Let us entrust ourselves to Him who says that with Him, nothing is impossible!
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      And let us ask ourselves which report would we have ‘heard’ and taken to heart?  Do we not almost always take this negative view? ‘It/they are too big for us, too much for little me.’  We become little grasshoppers in our own sight; how, then, CAN we stand against the giants in our lives?   And with the fear, our God inevitably becomes ‘little’ in our sight, which truly does render us useless.  The obstacles before us become insurmountable (not in our spiritual reality but) in our MINDS.      
        It takes a work of the Spirit in us to see the overwhelming circumstances of our lives through eyes of faith and be enabled to say (when He calls us to), ‘we should by all means go forward, for we will surely overcome it!’.
         “..faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”₁  Let the word of Christ dwell richly within us₂  that we may be able to take Him at His Word and have “a firm persuasion, a conviction based upon hearing”₃ and be able to give God’s answer to every situation as it is in our heart₄ because our hearts are one with His.  May we be able to say the same thing as God and follow the Lord our God fully.₅

This whole account is recorded in Numbers 13 and 14.
_{1) Romans 10:17, 2) Col. 3:16, 3) definition of the Greek word for faith, 4) Joshua 14:7, 5) Joshua 14:8}