Hey Clawson Family!

Song:

Scripture:

Numbers 13:25-33 New Living Translation

25 After exploring the land for forty days, the men returned 26 to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community 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 entered the land you sent us to explore, and it is indeed a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is the kind of fruit it produces. 28 But the people living there are powerful, and their towns are large and fortified. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak! 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[a] and along the Jordan Valley.”

30 But Caleb tried to quiet 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 disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” 32 So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. 33 We even saw giants[b] there, the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!”

Devotional:

My first time jumping out of a plane was not the best experience. 

The guy never gave any instructions or directions on the ground, I really had no idea what to expect. We are about 10,000 feet in the air, in a fetal position strapped to another man, on the floor right behind the pilot waiting to exit the airplane.

He told me to open the door. I reach over and hit this piece of velcro on accident and the door flies open. He says grab onto the wing, and step out on that metal piece. At this point everything on my body is shaking. I get to the metal piece and he says here we go! We jump off of the metal piece and we are out. 

Much different from the experience that you will have at skydive spaceland. At Skydive spaceland they want you to feel confident about jumping out of the airplane. So, while you are on the ground they will go through this with you multiple times. 

They will say, “When it is time I am going to tell you to start scooting down towards the door. When we get to the door, wait for me to tap you on the shoulder, and when I tap you on the shoulder then it means you can get in position. Position means grab onto the bar and put your body out of the plane now. Then when I give you a thumbs up we are going to do a 1,2,3… and we are going to jump together,  arch your body head up looking at the airplane.”

Once you get up there, it takes a little faith to look down on the Earth and take that leap of faith. I believe doubt is one of the major reasons that we do not take that first step in our faith journey. We are uncertain of what God says so we don’t know if we can trust it. We don’t get in the plane because we struggle with doubt.

When it comes to jumping out of the plane, fear stops us from putting our faith into action.

Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

Have you ever struggled with fear? There are over 1000 phobias or fears.  Fear of heights, fear of falling, fear of not being liked, Spiders, snakes, darkness, failure, being alone, death. The #1 fear is fear of public speaking. 

In order for us to put our faith into action and jump out the plane, we have to push past our fear and walk by faith. When we allow fear to paralyze us it stops us from trusting God. We see this in Numbers 13.

The people of Israel had been in Egypt in slavery for like 400 years. God sent Moses to free them from Bondage. God uses him in supernatural ways to get Pharoah to let the people go. 

They leave Egypt and Pharaoh regrets letting them leave. He takes his chariots and chases them down. They get to the Red sea and God parts the sea for the people of Israel to walk across. He then brings the sea back together to kill the Egyptians.God sends a cloud to lead them by day, and fire to lead them by night. He feeds them manna from heaven, quail, supernaturally gives them water to drink on multiple occasions. 

This is what they have seen God do. They get to the border of the promised land, Canaan. The people of Israel sent 12 spies into the land to scope it out. Out of the 12 spies, only Joshua and Caleb  trusted God and wanted to do what He said.They jumped out of the plane. They put their faith into action. But the other 10 spies did not trust God, and allowed fear to stop their faith. They began to spread their fear with the people of Israel until a spirit of fear was plaguing the people. It caused the whole nation of Israel to not trust God. They were disobedient to God and walked by fear instead of faith. God did not let any of that generation accept Joshua and Caleb to enter the promised land. The people had to wait till that generation died off before they could enter. It is so important for us to trust God and walk by faith. We have to put our faith into action and not allow fear to stop us from trusting and stop us from being obedient.

Journal:

In your journal, write down where you have fear instead of faith in your life. How is the Holy Spirit encouraging you to trust God? 

Training:

We have the choice to believe God is who He says He is, no matter what He allows in our lives. I say this as I continue to walk through difficult circumstances beyond my control while choosing to believe God will work it out: God will always work out all circumstances for the eternal good of those who love Him.

Dear God, 

Help me trust You when I feel uncertain, and I am afraid. May I rest in the truth that You are intimately concerned about me. Grant me peace as I wait for You to work out the difficult circumstances in my life.

 In Jesus’ Name, Amen.