Giants in the Land

This week was a bit of a blur, as Andrew and I had friends visiting on a vision trip.  I kept up pretty consistently with reading and studying, but have felt the weariness in my heart that comes after a long week of sleep deprivation and lack of consistency in all areas.

So, this week I didn’t really have anything new and fresh from 1 John.  On Saturday night, I drug out my Sunday School materials because I was slotted to teach, and begrudgingly began reading the lesson and preparing to teach the CMA Chapel kids. That is what I want to share with you (Ironically, there was a mix-up in communication and I didn’t even end up teaching, HA!  God has a sense of humor).

So, the lesson walked through Numbers 13-14, and was about the twelve spies who went into the Promised Land.  If you grew up in church, you know this story.  10 said “No”, two said, “Go, giant grapes… all of that.  As I prepared, I thought about the typical angle taken when this lesson is taught.  To kind of “go against the crowd”, to “stand up and do the right thing when others don’t”, but I have been learning over and over that the Bible is not a big list of heroes modeling morality.  We can gain some nuggets of what a godly life looks like, sure, but it is SO much more than that.

God is a great artist, who weaves in stories and imagery all throughout Scripture, and this is one more example where He is encouraging me through His word.

Think about it, Israel at this point has been wandering around for 40 years with the idea of this, to them, hypothetical idea that they might… someday… enter this Promised Land.  Have you ever had to wait on something?  Especially something that involves a big life change?  Like buying a house and waiting for papers to be signed and a closing date set, interviewing for a new job and waiting to hear back if it’s yours or not, a nine month pregnancy… raising financial support to move to an Island in the middle of the Caribbean sea… It’s hard to wait!  But imagine waiting 40 years, in the wilderness, not knowing how the wandering was going to end.  Not knowing what this Promised Land would be like.

But then, it’s time, everyone excitedly sends a representative from their tribe to spy out the land for forty days.  Imagine waiting on that report.  Even with that, do you think they anticipated going into war over and over, conquering other nations in order to make this said promised land theirs?  Do you think they anticipated giants in the land?  Hostile nations?  Sure, the land is good, but we came all the way here just to have the new and exciting be hard too?!

So what do they want to do?  Immediately, they complain, and wail and try to find new leadership… to take them back to Egypt.  Can we blame them?  Really?  We get just as impatient over lesser things.  God’s relationship with Israel, is so important for us to watch because we do the exact same things. 

When God called Andrew and I to the Dominican Republic, we were excited.  Change of scenery, new ministry, new people, new language and country.  While we waited (impatiently) to move, He taught us so many things.  He showed up in amazing ways (seriously, ask me for stories sometime) and reaffirmed that we were doing the right thing.

Then we got here.  For a while everything was new and exciting.  Then it started to get hard.  We started to miss things.  Discouragement set in.  When were we going to stop wandering around?  There were giants in the land, that without supernatural intervention, we weren’t going to conquer.

Along with that story, and those ideas, I have been reading (by recommendation of another staff here) "The Cross and the Switchblade" which is the story of David Wilkerson.  I am all about reading biographies about people who faithfully serve(d) and who know my Papa.  He was a small town, Pennsylvania pastor, who felt called and very blindly obeyed a call to pursue a group of boys on trial for murdering a handicapped boy in a park one night.  He faced so many unclear situations, but also so much direct comfort and leading from the Holy Spirit... but it just reminds me again that God calls us, sometimes blindly, to things that by the worlds standards make absolutely no sense.  Or, things that seem to have impassable obstacles.  That carry a lot of shame when those around us think we are NUTS in our steadfast obedience...  When we meet giants who make us look like a grasshopper, and we don't turn back...

God doesn’t give us specific promises like He did the Israelites.  I have no idea what is going to happen with CMA in the next month, let alone the next 5… 10… or 50 years.  What I do know, is God is very committed to ME.  To my ability to glorify Him by reflecting Him, and to my growing in greater knowledge of who He is in order to reflect him more and more accurately.  So, I may have to slay some giants.  I might be a grasshopper in comparison to the giants needing conquered.  It might be really hard, and then harder, and then absolutely unbearable, but He is faithful to my good; to His glorification through my life.  I can’t throw out my Leader, who has become so intimately near.  Nor can turn back in disobedience.  I must keep trudging along, fighting one battle at a time, because the Promised Land… my Savior, is worth the long journey, the wait, and the battle wounds that have been, and those that will be. 

Until then, may I represent the love, goodness, faithfulness, trustworthiness, tenderness, and beauty of my Father to people who need to know Who He really is.  The giants have nothing on Him.