For Fear of Giants

Confronting Giants

Today, I want to look at giants. The story of the Exodus tells us that 12 spies were sent into the promised land. They came back with tales of a beautiful land rich in produce. But 10 of them broke the people’s hearts by telling them of giants so large and powerful that they were like insects by comparison. The upshot of this story is that the people lost faith and refused to enter God’s promised land. This story became one of the foundations for the Book of Hebrews and a cautionary tale about what happens when we follow our fear instead of standing with God in faith.

“Today, if you hear his voice, 
     do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, 
         on the day of testing in the wilderness, 
            where your fathers put me to the test 
                and saw my works for forty years. 
Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said,
      ‘They always go astray in their heart; 
           they have not known my ways.’ 
As I swore in my wrath, 
     ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” 
Take care, brothers, 
     lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, 
          leading you to fall away from the living God. 
But exhort one another every day, 
     as long as it is called “today,” 
        that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 
For we have come to share in Christ, 
     if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Heb 3:7-14 ESV

Our Giants

In our world, we hear stories of unbeatable giants every day, and like the Israelites of old, these stories fill us with fear. Fear and faith are constantly at war in our hearts. To overcome fear with faith, we need to recognize those things that weaken and corrode our faith. The author of Hebrews describes how Israel fell in the wilderness due to unbelief. They had allowed their hearts to be hardened by sin, though they had seen God move on their behalf many times during their journey. Their hearts were wayward, running everywhere except to God when things got difficult, and over time, their hearts became evil and unbelieving.

Who do we listen to?

The people of Israel had a focus problem. We do, too. Every day, we choose the stories that we listen to. But if you are like me, too often, our choices are guided by our impulses and curiosity. They say you are what you eat, and that goes double for what you choose to listen to. The internet is full of news, but the news that gets the most clicks wins. And that winning news is almost always bad. Fear and anger drive and motivate people. We are naturally drawn to bad news. Knowing this, the news vendors produce more bad news, and we click on it, or if you’re a television person, you tune in. I guess it’s a survival instinct gone wrong. By nature, we look for signs of danger so we can prepare and be safe. But this instinct can quickly betray us, destroying our faith instead of protecting us from harm.

On the internet, this behavior even has kitschy names like “Doom Scrolling” or “Fear Porn.” But it doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is its effect on our faith. When we listen, watch, or read anything, we take something into our souls that positively or negatively affects our faith. We need to choose what we take in and then choose again how we respond to what we have just seen or heard. We can’t avoid bad news altogether, not on this earth. But we can choose how we respond to it. We can determine whether we spend our time corroding our faith with stories of doom or building our faith in God, who is greater than any problem we face.

In the story of Israel’s failure in the wilderness, it is easy to blame the messengers. They were responsible for the stories they told and their effect on the people. But when we blame others, we ignore our problems. The story of Israel in the wilderness was not recorded to correct those ancient messengers. It was written to warn us. Israel’s failure of faith did not begin on the day the spies reported in. Their response to the challenging report was qued up before the messengers began to speak. Their knee-jerk reaction to bad news was unbelief from the moment they left Egypt. Faith is not our default setting either, so we need to be intentional in our response to the things that come our way.

This Week

God is good. Our fears often stem from our belief (or unbelief) that He is not good. We are too quick to believe that God has forgotten or doesn’t care. We may even think that obeying God will lead to pain and suffering, so we need to protect ourselves. Entertaining any of these thoughts will cause us to lapse into unbelief under pressure. The time to strengthen our faith is not in crisis but every day. And our faith affects the faith of those around us.

This week, let’s be intentional. Let’s prepare for the big questions by getting the little ones right. We need to do this together, using our words to build up the faith of others and, in the process, anchoring our own. Let’s demonstrate faith and our love of God by finding ways to bless others, knowing that as we give to others, it will be given again to us by God.

Have a great week!