I love optical illusions. Like the sketch of the duck that is also a rabbit. Two people can look at exactly the same set of lines and come to different conclusions about what is there.

In Numbers 13, twelve spies are sent out to scope the land that God has promised His people. They all see huge bunches of grapes and they all see giants. Joshua and Caleb see the opportunity God is giving them while the other ten see the scary giants that made them feel like grasshoppers. The ten spies have the louder voice and Israel stays in the desert. They saw the same set of facts and came to wildly different conclusions.

We all face situations like this every day. Do we focus on an awkward conversation or the opportunity to reconcile a relationship? Do we focus on the sacrifice of obedience or the freedom that results? Do we see a sickness or the opportunity to pray for healing?

It’s also true for us as a church right now. We’ve spent the past few months making incredible progress towards potential new locations. It’s like we’ve been scoping out the land. We see obstacles like buildings, leaders and discomfort. We see huge opportunities like reaching people in our city and deeper discipleship relationships. So where should we focus?

The interesting thing is that the next generation was led by Joshua. He sent out spies again who would have seen similar fruit and similar giants. But those spies discovered that God was already at work in unseen ways, preparing the way for His people. The people of the land had already heard about God’s power and knew nothing could stop His people.

The truth is that all of us are engaged in a work of God that is bigger than us. None of us has the power to open a single person’s eyes to Jesus or help anyone become more like Jesus. The challenges will always be too big for us. The only way we can ever make any progress is to step out in faith and trust God to work by grace in us and through us.

So what will we choose? Let’s choose faith.

Simon

This post is part of the Senior Pastor’s weekly blog. Go to the blog feed >>

What Do You See?