A Different Attitude

A Different Attitude

[The LORD said,] “My servant Caleb has a different attitude than the others have. He has remained loyal to me, so I will bring him into the land he explored. His descendants will possess their full share of that land.” Numbers 14:24

CALEB AND JOSHUA WERE THE ONLY TWO SPIES of the twelve who believed in the promise—or at least who believed that it wasn’t contingent on whether they could defeat giants and destroy their city walls. In other words, they believed God could fulfill his word regardless of what circumstances looked like. And for that, they were commended. They were also given entrance to this land forty years later—Joshua as the leader and Caleb as an old but vigorous man of faith. In fact, Caleb was positively singled out for having a “different attitude,” a spirit that energized him to follow God fully. He entered into the land because he believed.

That’s how faith is rewarded. Centuries later, the writer of Hebrews urged his congregation of Jewish Christians to persist in their faith and not fall away from the promises God had given them in Christ. He wrote about the Israelites’ time in the wilderness, when many of God’s people were skeptical of his power and fell away. He told them not to let their hearts be hardened—a process that makes us resistant to faith—but to press ahead and believe. He assured them that the way to inherit God’s promises is through “faith and endurance” (Hebrews 6:12). Or, to describe it like Caleb, through maintaining a different spirit from the people around us.

Faith does not conform to the world’s ways or people’s expectations. If we want to be people of faith who inherit God’s promises—who actually enter into the promised lands he has laid before us—we will have to maintain a different attitude. That means when people talk pessimistically, we don’t join in. When headlines scream about the crises that are coming, we envision a hope and a glorious future. When our own hearts get discouraged, we find ways to strengthen them in the Lord. We persist in swimming upstream, against the culture, and into the promises of God. Because in the end, faith wins and God is pleased with it.

Faith is the victory! Oh, glorious victory that overcomes the world.