If God is God at all, then He must be a big God. I mean, if God isn’t bigger than us, and His wisdom and knowledge and power aren’t greater than ours – then He just isn’t God at all. Forget following Him. What is the point?
YET, if you look around at most people, isn’t it true that we generally (even so-called Christians) function as if God is not bigger than us. Even people who claim to be Christians, and certainly those who do not, live our lives as if people are bigger than God. So, we will trust God to lead us just as long as He doesn’t ask us to do something that clearly doesn’t make sense from a human perspective – like quit our job, decrease our standard of living, break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, move, or whatever. We will gladly submit to His will as long as His will is in alignment with our own. Functionally, God is not bigger than us, but rather much smaller. Functionally, we are in control, not God. One could even say, functionally, we are god and He is not.
One of the best illustrations of this in the Bible is in the story of the spies sent into Canaan in Numbers 13-14. Twelve spies were sent out to check out the land. Two (Joshua and Caleb) came back and said, “The land is amazing and we can take the people with God’s help.” Ten came back and said, “Yes the land is amazing, but those people are BIG. There is no way we can take them. Let’s go back to Egypt.” What???!!! Back to Egypt?? We are so used to slavery and life without God that sometimes it is easier to go back to slavery than to live in freedom.
Yet all twelve of the spies had seen all the plagues that God sent in Egypt. All twelve of the spies had walked through the Red Sea on dry land and then seen the Egyptian army drown in the same waters right behind them.
What makes people who have seen God’s power demonstrated over and over doubt His power again and again?
What makes Joshua and Caleb’s faith stronger than everyone else’s?
Read Joshua 14:6-15. At this point, Joshua and Caleb are in the promised land. They are the only two of the twelve who were allowed to enter it. Twice in this passage Caleb is described as one who “wholly followed the Lord.” What does it mean to “wholly follow the Lord?”
What would be different if you wholly followed the Lord?
