The Posture of Faith
“Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
These are the bold words of the two believing spies who reported back to the people of Israel in Numbers 13, alongside the ten others who brought a negative report after spying out the land of Canaan.
Even though God had already defeated greater nations, the land of Canaan seemed too difficult, in the minds of the 10 unbelieving spies, for them to conquer. The land and what it offered was more than good, but there were also giants in the land that had to be defeated. The people believed the negative report and effectively disregarded the testimony of the two faith-filled spies, Joshua and Caleb.
This kind of disbelief in God’s ability to do the lesser thing displeased God so much that He swore in His wrath that that generation would die and none would enter the land and His rest, except for Joshua and Caleb.
God is grieved when we can believe Him for salvation—the greatest victory—but not for the lesser things, victory in the smaller battles.
We look at the people of Israel and their responses in Numbers 13, and we probably can’t help but think, “Come on, guys, God just defeated the greatest nations and gave you their possessions. God literally just laid waste to the older and stronger nations that had power over you by numbers and force. How could you stop now?”
Very true indeed. How could they? They paid a big price for their unbelief. The book of Jude (Jude 1:5-7) says that Jesus Himself led them out of Egypt and then “destroyed those who did not believe.”
A more pertinent line of questioning for us today as we reflect on their unbelief should be more to do with the presence of our unbelief. I think the following question should make us ponder where we stand:
Now that God has given His only Son and promised to give us all things (Romans 8:32), why do we believe Him for the greater—namely, the sending of His Son, which He has already done—and not believe Him in the smaller “all things” that He will lead us into victory?
In Romans 8:32, Paul declares: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
It’s the same unbelief that many believers are crippled with today, which stopped the people of Israel from entering the promised land. Why, dear Christian, do you receive the harder thing for God to give—His only Son—by faith, and not believe that God can meet your daily needs, heal your body, deliver you from that addiction or demonized state, save your family, turn things around in your work situation, reach those kids who are far from God, save your marriage, or resurrect that calling you once were so sure of?
Let me ask you this: which is harder—to say your sins are forgiven or to say take up your bed and walk? It was harder to heal crippled legs than to say, “Son, your sins are forgiven,” because the evidence that the sin had really been forgiven in this context was that healing would follow (Matthew 9:5-8).
It’s the greater to the lesser—it’s the same pattern or argument. “God is with us—we can take the land” is the declaration of a blameless heart towards God. That is what God is looking for. The blameless heart towards God does not consider God less than He is—less able, less willing, less good, less faithful.
We need to believe that we can take territories again in the name of Jesus! That’s what we need today. God has a Kingdom for us to enter, but it looks like God’s people not only have to face giants in the land, but upon further inspection, need to be delivered from a spirit of fear and unbelief before they can do so. The unbelieving believer says, “Oh look, let’s just stay here—the land is good, sure, but we don’t want to die.” “Where we are is okay. We don’t want to have to contend or have our safety threatened.”
This is the language of people who don’t enter the realm of the Spirit or cross over into the Kingdom of God. They never face the giants, and they never taste the milk and honey flowing through the land. They never inherit the promises because they misunderstood the process.
We become who God wants us to be as we go in to take what He’s given. It’s not about where God’s taking us; it’s what God is making of us in the process. Set a goal to lead 10 people to Jesus—not because of the number, but because of what it’ll make of you in the process. Unbelieving believers don’t taste the fruitfulness of the Kingdom because they don’t see the promise; they see giants. They look at the land and see obstacles and not the rewards of faith. Faith-filled people see the good that God has for them and know that God has probably put the giants there in the meantime to keep safe what He has intended to preserve for those with faith.
In Exodus 3:7-8, this is what God had promised concerning the people of Israel who were at this time still slaves in Egypt:
I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
God doesn’t save us to then leave us with nothing but unanswered prayers; He doesn’t deliver us from the oppression of Satan to oppress us Himself. That’s not who God is. Let’s believe God! God’s purpose was two fold: a. to deliver them, b. to bring them up and into blessing.
So many of us are standing on the edge of the breakthrough. God is asking us to have the same faith that brought us out of sin and darkness to begin with, to believe that God has not begun a good work to abandon it. Faith doesn’t deny giants or the work ahead, but it denies us the right to use them as an excuse to stay where we are instead of entering into what God has for us.
Some people will over-spiritualize their lack of faith by saying things like, “God will do it, you don’t need to do anything—let go and let God.” There is a truth to waiting upon the Lord and not stepping out ahead of Him. We need to have patience sometimes. But in Numbers 13, they had already been commanded by God to go and take the land as God had given it to them already. Interesting, isn’t it? “Take the land, because I’ve given it to you” is God’s way of thinking about advancing. Let me point out here that the distance between Egypt and the promise land was about thirteen-fourteen days. This became forty years because of one thing and one thing only; unbelief.
God giving something into our hands does not mean that we do nothing. On the contrary, it should stir us into action based on what God has said to us. The command wasn’t new forty years later when it came time to enter again. It was the same—"enter the land, I’ve given it to you.” Will you believe, even though others in your family haven’t? Joshua was the man God used to enable them to enter because of his faith. His eagerness to take the land remained for over forty years. It preserved him and allowed him and others to enter where others before him couldn’t.
The command to go and make disciples is no different today than in your grandparents’ day, or the Apostle’s day. Will you go into all the world or stay where you are?
Be bold! Be brave! Start that ministry. Start that outreach. Start that business. Start working towards that dream. DO SOMETHING.
Here’s a final thought…
The Bible says that Solomon was given wisdom by God; he became the wisest man on earth. Here is something I found interesting, however. In Ecclesiastes 1, Solomon says this: “And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven.”
Did God give Solomon wisdom? Or was it the seed of desire to search wisdom out and understand? Was it the gift of wisdom or the gift of an insatiable desire for wisdom that was given to him? Does God give the Kingdom to us or the desire to seek it until we find it? The desire to knock until the door is opened. I think it is both. Faith is given to us as a gift of God so that we cannot boast before God, but we can build our faith by building a hunger for the Word of God and a ready/obedient heart.
When you make the decision to believe God for territories and to apply yourself to understand how you might do it, that is probably a key evidence suggesting that God has already given it to you. “GO therefore...”
“Let us GO up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it...(emphasis added)” is the declaration of a person/people who know their God and will enter His promises, eating the fat of the land, entering into new levels of Glory and Life in God. Listen to God today; obey His Word; apply yourself to learning what you need to learn. Go up and take the land God has already promised to give to you.
Live in faith. Believe God and take Him at his word. You will inherit. You will also cause others to inherit.
Bless God.
