Giants in the Land!

Numbers 13 is a great example of being called to go somewhere you've never been and do something you’ve never done. Equipped for it with God’s presence and encouragement but not doing it because of fear and self-disqualification.

Look at it, beginning with verses 1 and 2:
1 The LORD said to Moses,
2 "Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders…

Now, skip down to verse 17 : Moses gave them specific instructions:
17 When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, "Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.
18 See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many.
19 What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they un-walled or fortified?
20 How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land." (It was the season for the first ripe grapes.)

They spent 40 days there… and came back to report what they saw!

Read from verse 26 on… The report has 2 very distinct parts:
Part 1 – (verse 26 & 27) – This is a land flowing with milk and honey!
What GREAT news… God is providing for our needs! Look at these grapes, for crying out loud! This is a land flowing with milk and honey! All we’ve had for the past couple of years is manna, quail and water – think of it! No more quail burgers, no more ba-manna-bread, no more manna-cotti...

Sounds AWESOME doesn't it? You can almost imagine Moses and the elders asking excitedly…What next? What other great news can you tell us?? Come on, let’s hear what next?? We can’t wait!!

Part 2 – BUT (why is there always a “but”?) – (verse 28 & 29) –
28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.
29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan."

They named off every possible enemy (Specifically the giants) and excuse as to why NOT to go in and take the land (especially the giants)… if you look at the last verse in the chapter, you see that they thought little of themselves, let alone what others would think. “We are like grasshoppers in our own eyes…” They went so far as to say they’d rather go back to Egypt rather than enter the land.

They didn’t take into account that God was the one who promised them the land, and that if He was giving it to them that He would not just let them die, but He would show Himself strong and able to bring His word to pass.

Their rebellion and refusal to enter the land cost them another 40 years of wandering around the desert.

No, God didn’t desert them, He still dwelt among them in the Tabernacle; He still provided for them; He still led them with the pillar of fire by night and the cloud of smoke by day. Of all of those who left Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb went in to the land God promised the Children of Israel because they had a different spirit and were willing to go when God said to go.

How does this relate to today? As I've mentioned in previous posts, as a church, we are in the beginning phase of refocusing our ministry. It is a process that can be met with resistance even if it is approached with considerable prayer and preparation. Even if we face resistance though, we must move forward if this is where God is calling us to go.

Looking at the word refocus, it has no meaning if we don’t realize that we are OUT of focus in the first place.

I’d like to think of it like this - it’s like looking through a telescope towards a moving ship on the bay… Over time, as the ship moves closer or farther away it goes out of focus, you can’t tell what it looks like… we haven’t moved, but the ship did. So, we have to twist the knob to bring it back to focus.

As a church, we’ve moved through the seasons of life and time. So has our community. As things have changed, we need God to twist our knob as a church in order to bring us back INTO focus.

Now, here we are, as a church, with God pressing us towards the process of refocusing our ministry to be effective in our community. We can look at it much like they did in Numbers 13, with 2 ways to go:
1) To engage the refocus while our purpose is still in sight, looking towards the future and it’s fruit.
Or
2) To not engage the process, and watch our church lose relevancy in the community and ultimately lose sight of it’s purpose completely.

I leave you with two questions to think about today:
1) Do we look at our community as being the land of God’s promise?
Or
2) Do we look at our community as being a place to avoid because it’s filled with giants and the ground is hard?

Let's not be so quick to disqualify ourselves or those God has placed in our lives. When we are empowered by His Spirit and called to the mission, He will meet all of our needs, prepare the ground in front of us and change the people we meet. Though there are giants in the land we shouldn't be afraid. God is with us!

Let's keep loving people, and keep Chasing the Mission!

From Ponderosa Mom:

** A quick note, please feel free to respond in the comments section and I will post your response and do my best to reply! -p

Ponderosa Mom Wrote:
Great stuff here! I hope I'm responding to the right post here(4/19?)Here's a question-and I hope more folks will chime in as my husband and I are trying to learn more about what God is showing us in this area-

What would the Church look like as missional and truly empowered by the Holy Spirit?

It seems like we can be a type of "missional"(at least as I understand missional so far) without the Holy Spirit. In fact we can (and do) accomplish a lot of "good" things without much dependence on God at all. Money, numbers of people and a common goal can accomplish a lot. And this is what our family has been struck by and struggling with lately.

I read this teaching by a pastor recently and the truth of it hit me like a ton of bricks. He was talking about how the Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing by himself.."Jn. 5:19 (And in the Greek the word nothing has a unique meaning--it means nothing, just like in English). Anyway, he goes on to talk about the distinctions of Jesus' humanity in that 1.He had no sin to separate Him from the Father and 2.He was completely dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit working through Him. Then what are the distinctions of our humanity as believers?--We are cleansed by the blood of Jesus and through His sacrifice nothing separates us from the Father. So there remains only one unsettled issue--How dependent on the Holy Spirit are we willing to live?

So when you talk about what is different today--and that not much is different in human needs--something rose up within me and cried out wanting to add "Our dependence on the Holy Spirit!--We really look different from the first church in that." I don't even understand all of what this means--more of a heart thing God is burning into us now.Thanks for any response to my long-winded question(where's the smiley face option here???)

My reply:
P-Mom!
I really appreciate your thoughts and questions, I hope I am able to answer at least some of it…

A short answer to your question (well not really, but there is one...):

“What would the Church look like as missional and truly empowered by the Holy Spirit?”

A truly empowered church (the Ekklessia – Called Out Ones, not the building) could “look” like anything we can imagine or have faith for. I think the only limiting factor would be our willingness to engage the Holy Spirit and see others through His eyes.

Being missional is a heart thing. It implies action, not out of performance, but out of a love for Jesus that would motivate us to love others (see John 21, the exchange between Jesus and Peter; “do you love me? …feed my sheep”). **Notice He didn’t say "teach them the four spiritual laws." Jesus used the practical to lead him to the spiritual.

According to Galatians 5.22-23, when we are empowered by the Spirit, we produce the fruit of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This fruit then produces something else… seeds; seeds produce trees that produce fruit and that fruit produces more seeds… It is starting to look like a garden before long…

In Acts 1, Jesus tells His disciples to wait for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit… they did and one of the results was that 3000 were added to them in one day. Not that we need to be into the “numbers” game, but in this instance, the numbers represent the power of the Spirit to change a man’s heart.

As the church, we need to measure success differently. Not by the size of our buildings or by the number and quality of the cars in the parking lot or by the amount of money we have in the bank. Rather, we need to measure success by the lives changed and the fruit of that changed life.

We must be dependent on the Spirit of God for everything and in everything.

So, there is a short answer to your question and I think you may already know the answer:

A missional church, empowered by the Holy Spirit looks just like you and your family engaging God where you are and where He's leading you.

If you believe God has placed a vision in your heart, I want to encourage you to look at the following scripture and as James said, "be doers of the word":

Habakkuk 2.1-3 (The Message)
The Questions
1 What's God going to say to my questions? I'm braced for the worst. I'll climb to the lookout tower and scan the horizon. I'll wait to see what God says, how he'll answer my complaint.
God’s Reply
2-3And then God answered: "Write this. Write what you see. Write it out in big block letters so that it can be read on the run.This vision-message is a witness pointing to what's coming.It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time.

Keep loving people, and keep Chasing the Mission! -pete