It's a New Season: The Spies will not cause me to lose my destiny

My favorite story in the Bible is that of the children of Israel in the Wilderness.  That entire episode reads like a How To Guide of any type of journey that God brings you through

First is Deliverance from bondage in Egypt

Second: Here comes that old life chasing after you to take you back to Egypt

Third: You start wondering if it was a good idea to leave the comforts of bondage no matter how terrible it was.   You start romanticizing the "bad old days" It sure would have been better than the unknown, confusion, and obtacles you're facing now

Fourth:  You begin to grumble and complain about the blessings that God has given you in your devliverance.  What once was a blessing now becomes destable.  Enough is enough.  Where is the promise?

Fifth:  You get sick of waiting for God to bring you to the promised land so you build your own idols and try to make it all happen on your own.  Of course this is a miserable failure.

Sixth:  God finally gets sick of your grumbling and complaining so he will send snakes to get you to act right.

Seventh:  After you've learned to stop grumbling and complaining, the time starts to draw near to enter into the Promised Land.

Eighth:  God starts sending you glimpses and allows you to spy out your new territory.

So here we are at Step Number Eight.

I keep feeling like I see glimpses of the new territory.  It's exciting, It's Scary, It seems daunting,  Not a whole lot makes sense and I can already sense tremendous opposition.

On Tuesday God directed me to Numbers 13 and 14 to review the failed scouting mission of the Israelites.  God showed me Four Points in that story

The Spies Focused on the Problems

The spies came back with those amazing grapes and reported about the land flowing with milk and honey, but they didn't talk about that.  They focused on all of the problems they would encounter.  Oh the people are too big and oh we can't conquer it.

Forget it...It's too hard.

I really have to make up my mind NOT to focus on the obstacles and the not so positive.  So things may be less than ideal but that just gives God another opportunity to demonstrate his power.

The Spies exaggerated and the more they talked, the more they scared themselves and everyone else to death.

By the time it was time to talk to the entire group about what they saw on their scouting mission, the Israelites were grasshoppers compared to the people in the Promised Land and those folks would devour them and anyone else who tried to enter.  I think the spies were exaggerating what they saw in order to convince themselves that this was an unwinnable situation.

I truly believe we become what we say.   As the brother taught on Sunday,  If we say what we see, then we will see what we say.  If we exaggerate our problems and obstacles, then that's exactly what we see.  It's a lost cause.  I made it all up.  It isn't going to happen.  It's too hard and not worth it.

The people listened to all the Negative Nancys and had no trouble believing the bad reports.

How come nobody asked Joshua and Caleb why they were so positive?  Despite seeing all of the grapes and hearing about the land flowing with milk and honey, why did all of the people automatically believe all of the negative people?  Was it because there were more of them or was it because as humans we are programmed to believe the worst of everything.

I can already sense that beginning to take form in my own life.  I can sense that people will choose to focus on all of the reasons why THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA.  I can see people focusing on all of the not so great parts and completely missing anything positive.

When the spies returned, the people already had doubts and instead of saying "I trust God who brought us out of the wildernessa and provided all of these miracles" they responded with: 

"We knew it!  This was a bad idea!  Why did we ever think this was a good idea?  We are all going to die out here.  I wish we had stayed in Egypt"

Honestly?  I think I am going to be faced with that same scenario .  There will be the temptation to say things like:  "I knew this wasn't going to work out for me.  I wish I had never gotten started with this because I am just going to end up alone and on Hoarders after all

10 people ruined it for an entire generation

Simply Stated:  Those 10 negative people caused an entire generation to miss their blessing.

God has shown me  that if I am unwilling to trust him and pick what I think is the practical choice, take the "easy" way out, and not wait to trust him for my provision will cost an entire generation people of their blessing.

I don't mean that in an egotistical way but as a statement of conviction.

I will never forget what Aunt Joyce MEyer once said in her book "Battlefield of the MInd"

Your life may have been better off if someone in your past had obeyed God.  

When I read that, I made up my mind that moment that I didn't want my future children, grandchildren, or whoever else to suffer because of my disobedience.  

Declaration:  I will not allow spies to cause me to lose my destiny

Whether the spies are real people or in my head, I will not allow them to scare me out of my blessing.  I've waited too long for this to happen for me to lose it because I alllowed the fear mongers to believe that I can't do it or that it's a bad idea and my life will be ruined.

My life will be ruined if I don't trust God.

I have been repeating Caleb's words to convince the people that they could do it:  

Let's go at ONCE and take the land.  We can surely conquer it."

I'm going in....at once.  The time is now.

To God be theGlory