God also has a Promised Land for us. That Promised Land is His will for our lives. His will for our lives is also flowing with milk and honey and all the good things of God. Yet too often we choose to step outside of the will of God through our own free will. Too often we also allow people to speak negativity into our lives. Surely we also have seen the manifest glory of God in our lives already! He has saved us and delivered us from so much already. We too were in bondage before God delivered us. We know and believe in the miracles God has produced in our own lives yet there we stand in disbelief. We stand on the edge of our own Promised Land, doubting the God we know has already delivered for us and has promised us the land we are to possess! We can also start to treat the Lord with contempt and risk wandering in our wilderness; never to attain the Promised Land He has reserved for us.
Following the story we see how the Lord viewed the two who did believe:
But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Numbers 14:24
God is looking for the spirit of Caleb in all of us. He is looking for a people who will believe the promises He has sworn. He is looking for a people who do not treat Him with contempt. Yes He is in charge of everything but do not fall into the trap that His sovereignty eliminates your free will. Too often we are waiting for the Lord to do something in our lives while God is actually waiting for us to make a decision. Are we going to believe the report of man or the report of the Lord?
The greatest exercise of our free will is to choose to follow the will of God for our lives. Romans 12:2 outlines how this occurs. We must begin by renewing our mind. This will allow us to be transformed. How do we renew our mind? By no longer allowing it to be conformed by the world! There are two sides battling over your free will; the world and God. If you choose one, you deny the other. Paul is exhorting us in this verse to no longer conform to the world. When the report comes in that is in direct opposition to the word you already have received from God, you dismiss the report. Your mind is renewed into that of Joshua and Caleb who knew that as long as God is on their side, what they saw did not matter. Remember, the report of the ten was that the land was filled with giants and let's see how this frightening visage affected them:
We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." Numbers 13:33
We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. Not only did the giants scare them, but they reduced them. They not only forgot the promises of God but they thought even less of who they were. Too often we see the giants in our lives in the same way. We begin to think that we will never be able to overcome our sin, our addictions, our fears, or our past. We start to look at ourselves as less than God sees us. The water starts rising in our lives and soon it is all we can do just to keep our head above the waves of life crashing down around us. That is not how God intended you to live your life! He is willing to take all of our sin and fear and blot out our past from its continuous infection of guilt into our lives. He has promised this to you already. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1)! You are more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37)! You cannot possibly look to your future and take possession of the Promised Land God has for you if you are staring at the giants of your past. God has a good, pleasing and perfect will for your life. You can test and approve it if you renew your mind by refusing to allow yourself to be conformed to the patterns of this world. Have the spirit of Caleb! He saw the same giants in the land that the other ten scouts saw. He saw the dangers but knew what God had promised for his life. He knew the miracles God could do were so much larger than the giants he saw before him. God is still bigger than your giants today. Step out of the pattern of this world and the past that haunts you and step into the future and the Promised Land God has already given to you!
What is God speaking into your life today? Have you found yourself staring at the giants in your life and believing the report of the world? The report of the world is the enemy whispering right into your ears. "You will never defeat those giants! Look how big they are! You are but a mere grasshopper!" Don't listen to the lies of the enemy. God is bigger than your giants today. He is looking for the spirit of Caleb in you. Believe the word God has given you already and let no one detract you from it. Let no one make you doubt it. Renew your mind today. Exercise your free will by stepping into God's perfect will for you. His Promised Land for your life awaits you.
