Facing Down Our Giants

Read Numbers 13:26-33

“There we saw the giants…and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”—Numbers 13:33

Twelve men returned from spying out the Promised Land. All agreed the land flowed with abundance, but ten cautioned the giants in the land couldn’t be defeated. Joshua and Caleb urged the people to trust God and move forward but fear and doubt ran rampant, paralyzing the nation with inaction, confusion and distrust. In the end, Israel’s choice to fear the giants instead of trusting God resulted in 40 years of wandering while the entire fearful, rebellious generation died off.

Sad, God’s chosen nation became paralyzed by fear, anger, doubt and mistrust, and condemned to wander aimlessly, all because they feared giants more than they trusted God.

To be clear, giants aren’t always defined by their large physical stature. Sometimes giants are mental or emotional states that overshadow our lives and attitudes. The giants of fear, mistrust, bias, revenge, violence, hate, injustice and callousness can paralyze a person, even a people, causing them to forfeit a promising future for a life under the influence of and controlled by their giants.   

Yet, giants aren’t invincible. Giants are defeated when one single man—a Joshua or a Caleb—decides to walk in faith to face down the giants of fear, mistrust, bias, etc., in their own lives. Then one by one, others likewise choose to face down their own giants. The challenge Israel, and the rest of us face isn’t that our giants are so big, but that we determine we are impotent grasshoppers, incapable of taking on and defeating our giants.

Every day, we make a choice—to be a man who faces up to his giants, or a grasshopper who scurries away from the giants. Which am I, a man or a grasshopper?

Lesson to Remember: If you want to see giants destroyed in this world, start by slaying your own giants.

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”—Romans 8:31