When Obama was running for the presidency he kept saying, ”We can do it!  Yes, we can!”  Time showed how little he could actually do.
 
Caleb in Nu. 13:30 said almost the same thing, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it!”  This was not the language of carnal presumption however.  It was the language of faith.  “This is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.”  (1 Joh. 5:4).

I was told of a brother who full of self-confidence went up to the platform to share a word. But suddenly his mind went blank and he went down again, down-hearted.  A brother said to him, “If you´d gone up the way you went down, you would have gone down the way you went up!”

There´s a lot of carnal presumption in religious marketing.  The modern church platform is often a display of that empty nuisance.  But its performers usually don´t go down from the platform with the same humble self-knowledge as the defeated brother in question.

And yet we need the bold faith of Caleb and Joshua when facing apathetic fellow-believers who keep saying, “We are not able … they are stronger than we.”  (v.31), thus giving “bad report” of the land of blessings possessed in Christ but to be conquered by us – by faith.

Your and my conquest may not be a streamlined platform garnished with  music and amplifier systems, jokes and laughter, eloquence and quick wit, but that new trembling step of faith in your outreach to spread the good news of the gospel.  “Let us go”, Caleb said.  We need that kind of “Let´s go”-people rather than the many “We aren´t able”-people.

O, may that kind of spirit permeate our prayers!

March 9, 2014 - jn