God’s blessings come to us in various forms. There are blessings we enjoy just for being His creation, like the rain, sunshine, food, and family (see Matthew 5:45). We enjoy other blessings for being His children through adoption. Many of those blessings are the fulfillment of promises He has made to us as His children, and of course, there are blessings that we receive for playing our role in promises that are conditional on our obedience. For example, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
On other occasions, we
experience God’s blessings when we trust and obey His commands. For instance,
the Israelites had been promised a land flowing with milk and honey for their
own. The land wasn’t just handed over to them; they had to fight to take
possession of it. The fulfillment of this promise required faith in the God who
promised—that He is God Almighty who has the power and ability to do anything
and everything. It also required faith based on past experiences where God had
been faithful in keeping His promises, and demonstrated power on their behalf,
like delivering them from slavery in Egypt.
When the Israelites were
close to Canaan, the Promised Land, God instructed Moses to send tribal leaders
to go and spy out the land. Moses picked and instructed these men to find out
whether the inhabitants were weak or strong, few or many, if the towns had
walls or were open, fertile or poor soil, and also, to bring back some of the
produce. Twelve representatives, one from each tribe, were sent (see Numbers
13:1-3; 17-20).
On their return after the
survey, only two leaders (16.7%) were confident they could conquer the land;
ten leaders (83.3%) had a negative report. They reported that the inhabitants
were more in number, bigger, stronger, and some of them were giants; this
report frightened the rest of the people so much that they decided to not go
into the land, but instead choose another leader and return to slavery in
Egypt. When the two—Caleb and Joshua–tried to encourage them with their
favorable report, the community plotted to stone them (see Numbers 14:1-10).
If the Israelites really
believed in the God who promised to give them the land, if they had reminded
themselves of God’s faithfulness and power from the past, and if they had
taught themselves to obey God in the presence of fear and obstacles, the story
wouldn’t have ended the way it did—God was angry and would have destroyed them,
except for Moses’ intercession on their behalf (see Numbers 14:11-19). God
responded: “I will pardon them as you requested. But as surely as I live, and
as surely as the earth is filled with the Lord’s glory, not one of these people
will ever enter that land” (Numbers 14:20-22). Their punishment was to wander
in the wilderness for forty years (one year for each of the forty days they
spent spying on the land) until the older generation had passed away. Fear and
disobedience had robbed the older generation of God’s amazing blessings. In
addition, the ten negative reporters who incited the rebellion were struck dead
with a plague; only Joshua and Caleb from that generation lived to see the
promised land.
Dear reader, is God asking
you to do something? How are you responding? What are your fears and concerns?
Remember, He is going to be with you, providing you with the necessary
resources! Can you look back and recount some of God’s blessings and
faithfulness? Always remind yourself of them, remember God’s promises, and move
on in obedience. And even when you don’t understand situations, remember His
Word: “God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it
is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Philippians 1:6).
Don’t allow fear to rob you of the blessings He has for you!
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