In Our Own Sight & In Their Sight

Numbers 13: 33

...We became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

This was when the Israelites first came to the Promised Land, and they sent the spies in to check out what lie ahead.

The spies came back with a wonderful report of the land and the abundant produce they found there. The problem was that the people who lived there were a very large, tall, strong tribe, called Anakim, and they were so much bigger than these sons of Jacob that they were afraid of them.

God had told them that the people there were bigger and stronger than them, but when they saw them they realized that there was no way they could beat them on their own. That's why God said He'd go before them to clear them out.

But they didn't trust God even yet, and when they felt like insects beside these "giants," they interposed their own view onto these big people, and assumed that they would see them tiny, too.

They were still depending on their own feelings, and put on them their own conclusions. 

Haven't we all done that? How often do we think that other people think the same way we do? That they see things the way we do? When each person sees and perceives in their own way, through the multicolored glasses of our pasts? 

Every person is wearing his/her own "glasses" through which we each understand the world around us differently from everyone else. Only when we put ourselves in their shoes, considering their own past experiences, can we even start to see how they feel.

But God knows each of us so intimately that He can tell us what we need to know to please Him in the way each of us is designed to do, each slightly (or more) differently than every other. 

So, since God's people didn't trust Him even then, they doomed themselves to wandering in the desert for another 40 years, and only Joshua and Caleb trusted God to give them the victory over these Nations, so they were the only adults (20 years old or more) who were permitted to enter that Promised Land. All the rest died while they were still in the Desert.

O my Father, please help me to trust You to do what You have said You would do when my eyes show me that there is no way, it's impossible. Teach me to understand, not just know, that You are the God of the Impossible. Nothing is impossible to You, You can accomplish everything you want to do. Strengthen my dependence on You, to trust You more with more each day I live. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!