Today Our Daily Bread Numbers 13

Numbers 13: 1 - 33
1 The LORD now said to Moses, 2 "Send men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to Israel. Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes." 3 So Moses did as the LORD commanded him. He sent out twelve men, all tribal leaders of Israel, from their camp in the wilderness of Paran.
4 These were the tribes and the names of the leaders: Tribe - Leader Reuben - Shammua son of Zaccur 5 Simeon - Shaphat son of Hori 6 Judah - Caleb son of Jephunneh 7 Issachar - Igal son of Joseph 8 Ephraim - Hoshea son of Nun 9 Benjamin - Palti son of Raphu 10 Zebulun - Gaddiel son of Sodi 11 Manasseh son of Joseph - Gaddi son of Susi 12 Dan - Ammiel son of Gemalli 13 Asher - Sethur son of Michael 14 Naphtali - Nahbi son of Vophsi 15 Gad - Geuel son of Maki 16 These are the names of the men Moses sent to explore the land. By this time Moses had changed Hoshea's name to Joshua. F47 17 Moses gave the men these instructions as he sent them out to explore the land: "Go northward through the Negev into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like and find out whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? Do their towns have walls or are they unprotected? 20 How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there many trees? Enter the land boldly, and bring back samples of the crops you see." (It happened to be the season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.)
21 So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. 22 Going northward, they passed first through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai – all descendants of Anak – lived. (The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before the Egyptian city of Zoan.) 23 When they came to what is now known as the valley of Eshcol, they cut down a cluster of grapes so large that it took two of them to carry it on a pole between them! They also took samples of the pomegranates and figs. 24 At that time the Israelites renamed the valley Eshcol – "cluster" – because of the cluster of grapes they had cut there. 25 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned
26 to Moses, Aaron, and the people of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land. 27 This was their report to Moses: "We arrived in the land you sent us to see, and it is indeed a magnificent country – a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit as proof. 28 But the people living there are powerful, and their cities and towns are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak who are living there! 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev, and the Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea F48 and along the Jordan Valley." 30 But Caleb tried to encourage the people as they stood before Moses. "Let's go at once to take the land," he said. "We can certainly conquer it!" 31 But the other men who had explored the land with him answered, "We can't go up against them! They are stronger than we are!" 32 So they spread discouraging reports about the land among the Israelites: "The land we explored will swallow up any who go to live there. All the people we saw were huge. 33 We even saw giants F49 there, the descendants of Anak. We felt like grasshoppers next to them, and that's what we looked like to them!"
~Lena's Journalin'~
I find it interesting that the promised land God sent His people out into was defined as a place of trafficking, marketplaces. We think of our promised lands as being a place like heaven, a place of no more work, no conflicts at all, a place of peace. God thinks of it as a place of opportunity, a place of the potential of the fulfillment of His dreams. He sees it as covering more area with His plans and reproducing Him in areas that have not been touched by Him yet. It’s interesting that where God takes us or desires to send us is more of a mental place than a physical place. This passage says they were in a wilderness and He desired for them to leave the wilderness and go onto a place where fruit would be visibly abundant. When we think of this we think of ease once again, but fruit does not come forth in abundance and in great quality without effort or fight. God wanted them to see where He desired to take them and what the reward of the taking would be, and see if they were with Him in the plight and if they could do it with Him, trusting Him to go there with Him. How do you see yourself taking on plans God has? With Him or for Him? There is a big difference. If we go forth for Him, we may find ourselves feeling fatigued and hopeless, we may find ourselves not able to endure what is ahead. The point is we must go with Him, trusting Him every step of the way, just as Jesus did. Each one of the names of the tribes and of the enemies here will speak to us about where and how God takes us from place to mental place. If we look any of them up we will be spoken to by the Holy Spirit. For example, Judah means praise- God wants to send us from one mental place to another with praise, praising Him will keep us in the right place for the journey, it will keep our eyes on Him and the successes He’s giving us along the way. One stumbling block for the journey anywhere at anytime is pride, if we find success along the way, where we feel we have done something for God, we may be lifted up with pride if we do not center in on praise of Him. Praise will keep us in the correct mental place to get going the rest of the way and truly accomplishing His will in the matter. Another tribal name for another example is Simeon, which means hearing. How can we ever know when to move or not, where to go or not, how to go or not, if we don’t listen? Hearing is essential for being sent out to do God’s plan in a new land, or even to have the ability to get to that new place.
I’m thinking today as I read this, that we all have some sort of preconceived ideas of what we believe promises contain for us. Many times it is not as we figured it would be, the only way to be prepared is to be in communication with the Lord about His plans rather than ours. If we spend a lot of time asking Him for what we desire and telling Him our plans we may be surprised and a bit off guard when we see what He meant to happen or do. It appears to me that there is great wealth, potential for health and victory in the promised land, but there are obstacles of all kinds to these. I’m seeing the obstacles as being mental again, like giant ideas that could get in the way, like how we thought it should be in comparison to how it is. This is big in Christianity and the church today, because we thought salvation was about how nice things would be for us and how God would bless and serve us, and now we are finding out is is more about How we can serve the earth for Him. That is not at all an easy task, not a nice picture to take or a piece of cake walk. It is about taking land. It takes commitment, endurance, purpose, strength, flexibility, vision, etc to do this. It is more like a mission and a job, than a benefit. In doing the job there are benefits. Isn’t that how it is in life here? We work and we receive "benefits" that we’ve worked hard at and have obtained. Salvation is/was free, but takes a decision of our will to be a participator in, and salvation is NOT just for me, though it is for me. There’s just so much more, and God chose me/us to be a part of the plan of salvation He has for the world. Do you think a certain way about certain things? God wants to change how you think so that those ideas that get in the way of His plan – the big complete plan- will be set aside for the "greater good". Ever had a thought that you learned from church, like we should not be around people who smoke or drink, changed by a God idea? The idea was a God idea in a form, yet got twisted in our heads. We took a thought like that and separated ourselves from people who smoke or drink and we set ourselves away from them so we’d look better than them, stronger and higher than them, and maybe hoping somehow they’d want to be like us. Why would they want to be like us, rejecters of people who are weak? That’s how they’ve seen it, we’re so separated that we won’t associate with them enough to love them and show them the way, we just leave them alone to their dirty habits to die as they are, with no hope. That kind of thinking will keep us out of the land of promise, it is a giant of pride and self exaltation, it keeps us from reaching who God actually wants us to reach. When He said don’t hang with them, He meant their ways, don’t be a participator of the ways, not the people. Are we not strong enough to be with people who sin and not participate in sin? If not, we’ve got to go there. We’ve got to get to a place with Him, that we are able to take Him wherever we go and take His strength with us. That does not mean be in bars, it means love these people, anyway. Maybe they are your relatives who are not yet saved or who don’t know Him in an intimate way and have not been salted enough to want to know more. People perish for not knowing, who is gonna hang around them enough and love them enough and salt them in prayer enough to tell them? They’ll only listen to someone they trust, how can they trust us if we don’t hang around long enough to establish trust and prove trust, and for some that takes a longtime. How long has it taken you?