“The Lord . . will bring us safely to a rich land flowing with milk and honey.” Numbers 14:8 NLT
“So much of life is determined by what you think about what God says.”
My thoughts today are about “thinking straight.”
What you think will greatly shape what you believe and therefore what you do. But what if what you think is true isn’t? Has that ever happened to you? Incorrect thought can lead to inaccurate assumptions that result in misdirected actions. Be careful: a wrong way of thinking can lead you where you didn’t mean to go, or prevent you from going where you should have.
There was a time when sailors thought the world was flat, and feared sailing “off the edge.” Our grandfathers and their fathers never thought man would stand on the moon, until someone else thought that he could. In 1899 the U.S. patent office almost closed because the man in charge said, “Everything that can be invented already has been.” All of their thinking was wrong. That still happens every day. Any day, that can happen to you. If you think you can’t, you won’t. See Proverbs 13:7 NAS.
Moses sent twelve men, one from each of Israel’s tribes, to investigate the land they were ready to enter. They had come a long way with much effort and anticipation. God had promised them. God had led them. God had protected and provided for them in their journey. And now a rich land lay just ahead of Israel. Unprecedented opportunity was before them. Two men, Joshua and Caleb, said Israel should enter and possess the land as God had told them. So what’s the problem?
The only thing standing in their way was a few people’s wrong thinking and mistaken ideas. Numbers 13:27-8/31-32 NIV. Ten men reported there were fortified cities and formidable adversaries, even giants, ahead of them that would make their conquest dangerous, if not impossible. “We saw giants there . . we felt like grasshoppers next to them, and that’s what we looked like to them.” Numbers 13:33 NLT. What they thought about themselves made them believe the inhabitants thought the same about them. See 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV.
So much of life is determined by what you think, and what you think decides what you do. Some people look at the obstacles and quit; others look at the opportunities and get excited about their possibilities. The majority is not always right, especially if they are all thinking the same and their thinking is wrong. The majority of Moses’ scouts saw giants and wrongly thought of themselves, and their God, as mere grasshoppers – inadequate and unable.
The minority saw God as great and themselves as giants in God’s hands! They were thinking straight. “We should go and take possession of the land for we can certainly do it . . if the Lord is pleased with us, He will lead us safely into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us.” Numbers 13:30/14:8 NIV.
My prayer for you today is to keep your thinking straight and anything is possible.