Category Archives: Joshua

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Ask Big, Live Large

Your God Is Honored When You Pray Bigly

Are you willing to ask big things of God? God loves it when his children trust him so much that they are willing to step way out in faith to possess promises that are way beyond what is humanly possible. God is honored when we pray bigly. But if you ask big things of God, get ready to be big enough for the britches God gives you. God wants to give in abundance, but he will never waste kingdom resources. In other words, he wants you to leverage every ounce of his provision to the maximum so that he can give you more. If you waste it, settle for less than maximum use, or misuse what he provides, he will not release more to you. In fact, there is indication in scripture (Matt 25:24-30) that if we don’t steward his gifts wisely and industriously, he will even take away what he has given and give it to someone who will develop it in faith. When he gives you something, he expects you to fill it out. So be willing to ask big and live large in such a way that his abundant goodness is visible through you!

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 19:1, 9

The tribe of Simeon’s homeland was surrounded by Judah’s territory…. Their allocation of land came from part of what had been given to Judah because Judah’s territory was too large for them. So the tribe of Simeon received an allocation within the territory of Judah.

Are you willing to ask big things of God? I hope so! God loves it when his children trust him so much that they are willing to step way out in faith to possess promises that are way beyond what is humanly possible to attain. God is honored when we pray bigly.

So are you ready to live large! If you ask big things of God, get ready to be big enough for the britches God gives you. You see, God is a God of abundance, and he gives in abundance, that is, he gives us more than enough. But while he gives abundantly, he never wastes kingdom resources. When he gives you something, he expects you to fill it out. In other words, he wants you to leverage every ounce of his provision to the maximum so that he can give you more. If you waste it, settle for less than maximum use, or misuse what he provides, he will not release more to you. In fact, there is indication in scripture (see Matthew 25:24-30) that if we don’t steward his gifts wisely and industriously, he will even take away what he has given and give it to someone who will develop it in faith.

In the case of the land allotment to the tribes of Judah and Simeon, the visionary folks of Judah had an industrious spirit about them. So God gave them much more land than they needed at the time. Yet because they had not taken full advantage of it, God took a portion of it and assigned it to the Simeonites. Judah, however, was not content to shrink into their land. They got fired up and later on asked the warriors of Simeon to join forces with them to take the land that was not yet under their occupation:

The men of Judah said to their relatives from the tribe of Simeon, “Join with us to fight against the Canaanites living in the territory allotted to us. Then we will help you conquer your territory.” So the men of Simeon went with Judah…. Then Judah joined with Simeon to fight against the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they completely destroyed the town. So the town was named Hormah. In addition, Judah captured the towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, along with their surrounding territories. (Judges 1:3,17)

I like that about these two tribes. God’s blessing was more than they could handle, but they were unwilling to shrink into what they could handle. That is not the case with many believers: they get overwhelmed by abundance, as unbelievable as that sounds, and for a variety of reasons, fritter away their opportunity to fully occupy their blessings. They are like the intimidated steward in Matthew 25. But in the case of Judah and Simeon, they got smart: they joined forces and helped each other take the land. By faith and hard work, the expanded into their blessings.

That is the kind of believer I want to be. I want to be someone who is not afraid to ask bigly of my Father. And I want to be someone who is not afraid to leverage the large opportunity he gives in response to my asking, and maximize what he has placed in my hands. I want to do that to show him how much I trust him. I want to do that so that he can trust me with more. I want to do that so that others will be provoked to godly discontent in settling for anything less than God’s generous abundance.

Among the many things I want people who know me to say in reflection of my life, I hope they will say, “He asked big, but he lived large for God.” I want to leave nothing on the table when my life is over. I want none of heaven’s treasures appointed for me while I am on earth to remain in heaven. I want it all for the glory of God alone.

How about you? Let’s make a commitment from this day forward to be people of ask big and live large.

Going Deeper: Ask your Heavenly Father for some big, hairy audacious provisions today. Choose to ask big, then live large.

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Waiting On The God Who Waits On Me

Make Sure To Do Your Part

SYNOPSIS: Where are you waiting on the God who is waiting on you to do your part. What does that look like for you? Where do you need to step up and get after it? Are there divine promises unclaimed in your life, and the constraint is not God, it is you? Tough questions, but let me encourage you to get after it. The effort will be well worth it, and besides, God has already done his part; victory is already yours. So why wait any longer? Let me give you a verse from another section of scripture that applies to what I am asking you to do: “Be strong and courageous and get to work. Don’t be frightened by the size of the task, for the Lord is with you; he will not forsake you. He will see to it that everything is finished correctly.” (1 Chron 28:20, LB) Be bold and get after it—God is waiting on you!

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 16:5-6,10

Now that the land was under Israelite control, the entire community of Israel gathered at Shiloh and set up the Tabernacle. But there remained seven tribes who had not yet been allotted their grants of land. Then Joshua asked them, “How long are you going to wait before taking possession of the remaining land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given to you?

Perhaps what you are waiting on from God is waiting for you to do what God is waiting for from you. Wait! What? Wait? I know, it sounds a bit convoluted, but simply put, sometimes we are waiting when we should be working. God has done his part, but we haven’t done ours, and so the answers to our prayers are delayed.

The Christian life is a balance between what God does and what we do. Of course, our work is in response to his work—we don’t work to get God to do anything; he has already done everything, and our effort is always what is right and fitting because of his gracious acting on our behalf. We have a covenantal partnership with God, and each plays a role in order to live out the covenant. Or as Paul puts it in Philippians 2:12-13,

Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

We must work out what God has worked. But so often we wait for God to do what he has already done. We misunderstand our responsibility in the partnership, or we avoid it because of spiritual laziness, or we are irresponsible, or frankly, maybe we are in rebellion against God, and we are simply not carrying our weight in the deal. Whatever the case may be, God will not do what we are to do. God will do what we can’t, but he will never do what we won’t.

Now in Israel’s case, God had promised them the land of Canaan as their home. He had brought them through 400 years of slavery in Egypt and through forty years of wandering in the desert to the edge of their new homeland. He had gone before them and had driven out their enemies. He had guaranteed their victory. But he had also called them to cross the Jordan into the land. He expected them to fight their enemies, drive them out and take possession of the cities and farmland the Canaanites left behind. He had been clear that they were to stay at it until the task was complete. Yet after more years than they needed, the work was incomplete. They had not done what they were supposed to do in response to what God had already done. So Joshua called them out on it.

I suppose all of this makes sense to you, and that you agree with it in principle—that God plays a part and we play a part. But I also suspect this is a bit vague as it relates to your life specifically. So the challenge I have for you in response to this chapter is to do some hard thinking about where you may be waiting on the God who is waiting on you to do your part. What does that look like for you? Where do you need to step up and get after it? What promises are unclaimed in your life, and the constraint is not God, it is you?

Tough questions, but let me encourage you to get after it. The effort will be well worth it, and besides, God has already done his part. The victory is already yours. So why wait any longer? Let me give you a verse from another section of scripture that applies to what I am asking you to do:

Be strong and courageous and get to work. Don’t be frightened by the size of the task, for the Lord is with you; he will not forsake you. He will see to it that everything is finished correctly. (1 Chronicles 28:20, LB)

Be bold and get after it—God is waiting on you!

Going Deeper: Where are you waiting on the God who is waiting on you to act? That is the most important question you will be ask today. I hope you can answer it, then do something about it.

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Act As If

Be Strong - Act Boldly!

SYNOPSIS: When the Bible commands you to be strong and courageous, what does that mean for your life today, practically speaking? Simply put, it means that you would just “act as if” God is in charge. Now that sounds great, but how do you bring that out of the vague clouds of theological agreement and into the real world of what is assigned to you today? Well, on this particular day, it will be fear, not problems, that will keep you in the wilderness of spiritual paralysis and out of the promised land of measurable progress! So don’t let that happen. Act as if God is with you—because he is. Now with that in mind, what action steps do you need to take with God at your side to move from good intentions into ruthless obedience? Write out those steps … then boldly take them!

Project 52—Memorize:
Joshua 1:9

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

As you read Joshua 1:1-9—the setting for this verse—you can’t help but notice the repetition of the phrase, “Be bold and courageous.”  My guess is that Joshua has a bit of a fear problem going on as a result of the overwhelming leadership challenge that had been thrust upon him.  That’s why four times God reminded him to just “act as if God were with him”—which he was, of course.

Isn’t that really what being bold and courageous is? To just “act as if” God is in charge.

Like Joshua, you may have a pretty big task in front of you, and what typically happens in those cases is that you begin to doubt. You begin to question: “Is it really God’s will that I do this? Will he be with me? What if I fail?” Doubt sets in. And when doubt sets in, fear is not far behind. And when doubt and fear team up, you’ve got a recipe for spiritual paralysis.

That’s like the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown was standing there waiting to catch a baseball, and he says, “A pop fly!  I’ve got it!  It’s all mine.”  Then he says, “If I catch this ball, we’ll win our first game of the season.”  Then he starts praying, “Please! Please let me catch it. Please let me be the hero.  Please let me catch it. Please!” 

In the next frame, Charlie says, “On the other hand, do I think I deserve to be the hero? The kid who hit it doesn’t want to be the goat. Is baseball, a game, really that important? Lots of kids all over the world have never even heard of baseball. Lots of kids don’t even get a place to play at all or have a place to sleep or…”

And just about that time the ball drops right in front of him—bonk! Linus comes out and says, “Charlie Brown! How could you miss such an easy pop fly?”

Charlie says, “I prayed myself out of it.”

We do that sometimes, too. We start doubting the opportunities that God places before us, and pretty soon we talk—or pray—ourselves out of them. But like Joshua, God says to us, “Have confidence in the fact that I want to bless your life and give you success.” 

A. B. Simpson once said, “Our God has boundless resources. The only limit is in us. Our asking, our thinking, our praying are too small; our expectations too limited.” Four times God said to Joshua, “Don’t you get it? You can do it! Go for it! I’ve got you covered.”  In other words, “Be determined and confident. Act as if I will be with you and help you out—because I will!”

God said that to Joshua, and made sure that it was included in his Holy Book, because he foresaw that today, fear, not problems, will keep you in the wilderness of spiritual paralysis and out of the promised land of victory!

So don’t let that happen. Act as if God is with you—because he is. He promises!

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reflect & Apply: What is the task that is before you today? Take a moment to envision tackling it as if God were right in front of you. Then, act as if!

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Holy Shivers Over The Holy Land

Rejoicing in the Details of God's Promises

SYNOPSIS: Only a real estate agent or a cartographer would appreciate the Bible passages that give exacting detail of the settlement of land for the tribes of Israel. But what we might find boring, those who were on the receiving end cared very much about those details, because every square inch represented centuries-long waiting for God’s promises now miraculously fulfilled. So whenever you come to a passage on land allotment, write yourself into the story. Even though you don’t have a literal Promised Land for which you are waiting, you are waiting for God to fulfill his promises to you—and believe me, you care about the details of what that will look like. Read it and rejoice in the details as an act of faith, because one day, sooner or later, God will answer your prayers and fulfill his promises to you with specificity and generosity.

The Journey // Focus: Joshua 17:10-11

Manasseh’s boundary ran along the northern side of the ravine and ended at the Mediterranean Sea. North of Manasseh was the territory of Asher, and to the east was the territory of Issachar. The following towns within the territory of Issachar and Asher, however, were given to Manasseh: Beth-shan, Ibleam, Dor (that is, Naphoth-dor), Endor, Taanach, and Megiddo, each with their surrounding settlements.

Ever get the holy shivers? Yeah, me neither. But I’ve seen people respond to God’s blessing in ways—physically and emotionally—that far exceeded their capacity to manage it. Especially in foreign, rural contexts I have watched worshipers get so beside themselves with joy in the Lord that their expressions of love, praise, and gratitude broke human containment. They got down and boogied in response to the blessings of God.

Now when you read Joshua 17, holy shivers are the last response you are likely to have. Frankly, only a real estate agent would be inspired by the details as land is parceled out to the tribes of Joseph. A cartographer might enjoy the chapter a little bit as well because of the prospects of mapping out the Holy Land. But other than those two, I doubt if too many readers are going to be excited with the details of the land distribution that make up chapter 17.

So what is in this for us? Let me answer that by having you put yourself in the sandals of the people in this chapter. Imagine yourself as one of the members of a clan in the tribe of Ephraim. Pretend that you are one of the five daughters of Zelophehad (one of the young ladies was named Noah, by the way; she must have been an amazing woman), who stood to gain real estate as an inheritance because their dad had no sons as heirs. Imagine that you, your parents, grandparents and ancestors going back 400 years had been hearing about a Promised Land that would one day be yours, and all you have known for centuries was slavery and wilderness wandering. You had nothing to your name, no place to call home, no sense of permanence and no real geographical identity. And now, you have been given land—and the land had been described for you with geographical specificity. Do you think you might be a bit excited about the description of your real estate in that context? I think so!

What is described in this chapter (and several surrounding it) represented the promises of God finally fulfilled after what seemed like interminable waiting. This represented answers to prayer. This was a bit of heaven on earth. And the Israelites were rightly excited about real estate details that today we find boring and worthy of skipping past. But don’t—refuse to get either bored or skip happy. Write yourself into this and others stories like it.

Even though you don’t have a literal Promised Land for which you are waiting, you are waiting for God to fulfill his promises to you—and believe me, you care about the details of what that will look like! So whenever you come to a section of scripture like this, rejoice in the details as an act of faith, because one day, sooner or later, God will answer your prayers and fulfill his promises with specificity and generosity.

Going Deeper: Turn to the back of your Bible today and look at the map of Israel that offers a scheme of the allotment of land for the twelve tribes. Now take a moment to rejoice in advance of the Promised Land into which God is bringing you.

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Allowing Canaan To Camp Out In Your Heart

Be Killing Sin Or Sin Will Be Killing You

SYNOPSIS: The Puritan preacher John Owen said, “be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Whether it is flat-out disobedience or benign neglect, our disobedience always allows sin to grow. And where sin grows, sin festers, and spiritual anemia, sickness and death will ultimately result. This is a matter of kill or be killed! Go with kill!

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 16:5-6,10

The boundary of their homeland began at Ataroth-addar in the east. From there it ran to Upper Beth-horon. then on to the Mediterranean Sea…. [But] they did not drive the Canaanites out of Gezer, however, so the people of Gezer live as slaves among the people of Ephraim to this day.

The modern reader of Scripture cannot help but read the Old Testament through the eyes of twenty-first century western culture. For that reason, much of what we read seems harsh and unfair, if not brutal and primitive, and definitely at odds with our current values of acceptance and inclusiveness. Even in warfare, how we treat our enemy is much different than it was in Old Testament days—and for that, I am sure our enemies are grateful (although I don’t think they would take the same approach with us).

Case in point: God told the Israelites to totally annihilate the Canaanites and purge them from the land as they went in to possess it. As the people of God moved in, by Divine command, the current residents had to go—every single last one of them.

Now while most Bible-believing Christians today accept that, we are certainly uncomfortable with both God’s command to displace the nations and his method for displacing them. When non-believing people question the harshness of the God of the Old Testament in light of these kinds of stories, we have no adequate answer, although there are reasonable explanations. We simply surrender territory on this issue of the sovereign God’s loving but just nature. My point here is not to defend God. For one thing, he can defend himself. And for another, if we truly understood the wickedness and brutality of the people who occupied Canaan in the days of the conquest—people who would make ISIS look like a Girl Scout pack—we would feel a little better about God’s commands.

Let’s set that aside for now. The point I want to make here is that when we fail to do what God commands, for whatever reason, we will suffer the logical consequences of that failure. Whether if is flat-out disobedience or benign neglect, our disobedience always allows sin to grow. And where sin grows, sin festers, and spiritual anemia, sickness and death will ultimately result. God told the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites; they didn’t. They had their reasons: the Canaanites were harder to get rid of than we might imagine; most of them had been decimated anyway, so what would leaving just a few really hurt; the few that were left actually made good slaves for menial labor that no one else really wanted to do, so leaving them actually made better sense than driving them out. The Israelites had their reasons, and I suspect many of the reasons sounded good.

But sin always has consequences, and the outcome of sin is never good! What was true for Israel is true for you and me today. We are not called to drive out a people from our neighborhood; that kind of literal biblical conquest is over. Yet there is another conquest God has assigned his people: to get rid of sin from their lives. The Apostle Peter spoke of being done with sin:

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. (1 Peter 4:1)

Theologically, we know that; we understand that sin must go. And like the Canaanites, that is not always as easy as it sounds. For that, God gives the Holy Spirit to help us do away with sin in our lives; and he gives the grace of forgiveness when we fail. Moreover, he walks with us as we give continuous effort to mortify our sinful nature. That is not the real problem here: it is when we accept what God calls sin; it is when we enslave what will ultimately enslave us and we allow sin to hang around in our lives—that is the problem. When we justify anger, lust, pride, judgmental attitudes, and other sins that are easy to camouflage, we commit the sin of the Israelites. We have allowed Canaan to camp out in our hearts.

The Bible should serve as a cautionary tale in this regard, for there is story after story of how allowing Canaan to camp out paved the way for Canaan to rise up and bite Israel in the backside. The end result of inattention to sin is always far greater than the pain of sin when it is in full bloom in our lives—and it will always grow into bloom if we neglect our call to decimate it.

Got sin? Deal with it! Even the little, leftover stuff. The good news is, God stands ready to assist those who get serious about being done with sin.

Going Deeper: Is there leftover sin in your life—the little stuff that is easy to camouflage and justify. Quit! Stop! Deal with it! Today is a great day to start, and God will supply both the want to and the will to give it the boot from your life.

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Asking For The Whole Enchilada

God Has Boundless Resources

SYNOPSIS: A.B. Simpson said, “Our God has boundless resources. His only limit is us. Our thinking and praying are too small.” So in your praying, don’t just ask for the bare minimum, go for the whole enchilada, because if you don’t ask, he won’t give. And if you don’t ask bigly, don’t be surprised that you don’t receive bigly. Your Father wants you to see unlimited possibilities in him. He longs for you to ask, and ask daringly. And when you do, you honor him.

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 15:18-19

As Caleb’s daughter, Acsah, got down off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What’s the matter?” She said, “Give me another gift. You have already given me land in the Negev; now please give me springs of water, too.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

In your praying, don’t just ask for the bare minimum, go for the whole enchilada. That is why I think this otherwise unimportant story was included in scripture. If anything, Acsah’s request of her father teaches us not to sell God short. God is a big God and his resources are unlimited. As A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, said, “Our God has boundless resources. His only limit is us. Our thinking and praying are too small.”

Acsah was the daughter of Caleb. Caleb was one of two spies out of twelve that came back from scouting the Promised Land with a positive report. That story is told in Numbers 13, forty five years prior to this moment in time. Caleb was of a different kind of spirit than the average guy. He was a possibility thinker. He didn’t see obstacles, he saw opportunities. His faith in God informed his asking and his acting.

When the ten other Israelite spies saw their enemies as giants and themselves as grasshoppers by comparison, Caleb (along with Joshua, the twelfth guy in this consortium of spies) saw only the God of Israel who was bigger than Israel’s biggest enemy—even bigger than the gigantic men of Anak (Numbers 13:28). In fact, four decades later in Joshua 14, Caleb, now an eighty-five-year-old, boldly asks Joshua to give him the mountains around Hebron for his inheritance. And in declaring that he could take the mountains, he specifically called out the giants of Anak, who were still in the land occupying the very mountain that now belonged to Caleb. I think Caleb was still spoiling for a fight with these gigantors all these years later.

His daughter was cut from the same cloth as Caleb. Like her father, she was bold, she was brassy, and she didn’t see problems, she saw possibilities. When her father gave the inheritance—a rarity that a woman would be specifically named in the allotting of land in that time and culture—she decided that what he gave her was not enough. Not that she was ungrateful, she just knew the can-do spirit that her father possessed—and she leaned into it. She knew that he was motivated by faith; that his eye saw beyond what normal people saw, so she appealed to his character in asking for not only a piece of land, but for the nearby springs as well. After all, what good is land in the wilderness if it has no access to water? So Acsah wasn’t just asking to gratify her selfish desires, she was asking for something that was essential for her family to succeed and expand.

And her father granted her request. (Joshua 15:19) My guess is that as she walked away from this encounter, old Caleb turned to his buddies and said, “that’s my girl!”

And your Father will grant your requests, too. But if you don’t ask, he won’t. And if you don’t ask bigly, don’t be surprised that you don’t receive bigly. Your Father is of a different Spirit—one that wants his children to see unlimited possibilities in him. He longs for his kids to ask, and ask daringly. That is why he has encouraged them throughout his Word to ask for the desires of their heart. In one of the most stunning passages in scripture, the Son of God said,

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father. (John 15:7-8)

Now obviously, this isn’t a blank check for selfish asking. The key to what John 15:7-8 says is that we first must “abide in him and allow his words to abide in us.” The “abiding in his word” isn’t about Bible reading or scripture memorization, it is about intimately knowing the character of God—and letting that knowledge inform your asking.

This is the story of Caleb and Acsah. Both of them were of the tribe that asked for the whole enchilada. I hope you will join me in being a part of that tribe, too!

Going Deeper With God: What are you asking God to do in your life? Kick it up a notch; don’t just ask for the land, ask for the springs, too. God loves it when you do that.

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Faith Sees Farther

A Daring of the Soul

SYNOPSIS: William Newton Clark said, “Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see!” As believers in Jesus, you and I are in the mountain moving business, and our currency is faith. If what we are doing doesn’t involve faith—if we can do it ourselves without a desperate need of God—then we are not doing the Lord’s business. But with faith we are, and with it, nothing is impossible.

The Journey// Focus: Joshua 14:10-13

Then Caleb said to Joshua, “Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, with the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.” Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance.

Are you daring great things for God? Whether or not you are is your choice, but I say “why not?” You and I have only one life to live, and it will be over soon enough, so let’s try something daring for God. Why not do something that will make a difference in someone’s life one hundred years from now? How about we try something that will leave them talking about us long after we are gone? Yes, let’s attempt something that will be celebrated by saints and angels alike for all eternity! Why not at least try?

That is the story of faith in the Bible. Read Hebrews 11 and you will see that God’s Great Hall of Faith is made up of men and women no different than you and me who stepped out and attempted the impossible for the sake of the kingdom. Now some of them were successful and some of them were not, by the world’s standards anyway, but it was the faith that led them to try that got them eternally noticed in Hebrews 11.

Caleb was one of those kinds of people. He was in his mid eighties when he informed Joshua that he was ready to take on a certain warrior-like and historically large—and I mean physically big and imposing (see Deuteronomy 2:10, 21; 9:2)—segment of the Canaanites in the well fortified hill country surrounding Hebron. “Give me this mountain,” Caleb said to Joshua as the land was being allotted to the tribes, and that has forever become the war cry of unlikely men and woman whose faith sees farther than the eye sees and whose spirit dares to attempt impossible things for God.

I love what William Newton Clark said, “Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see!” As believers in Jesus, you and I are in the mountain moving business, and our currency is faith. If what we are doing doesn’t involve faith—if we can do it ourselves without a desperate need of God—then we are not doing the Lord’s business. But with faith, nothing is impossible. Jesus, the Founder and Finisher of our faith, said, “The simple truth is that if you had a mere kernel of faith, a poppy seed, say, you would tell this mountain, ‘move!’ and it will move. There is nothing you wouldn’t be able to tackle.” (Matthew 17:20)

We have been given faith—more than enough, actually—but are we daring to exercise it? We have in front of us at the present moment “things farther than we can see.” Or at least we should. If we don’t then we need to come before God and ask him to give us a scary big vision of what could be.

Whatever that vision is, however impossible it might seem, whatever the obstacles that stand between us and it, if it is noble, if it is consistent with God’s kingdom, if we hunger after it, we must stretch ourselves to reach it, to achieve it. William Carey, missionary to India and considered to be the father of modern missions, said, “Attempt great things for God—expect great things from God.”

That is the story of common men and women who stepped out to where others wouldn’t and in so doing, ended up achieving the uncommon. They didn’t step out thinking they were doing the heroic, they just stepped out thinking God would take care of them. And he did—and by stepping out in faith, they stepped into God’s Great Hall of Faith.

“Give me this mountain,” eighty-five-year-old Caleb boldly demanded. He was the forerunner of many others who would do similar:

  • Jabez said, “Enlarge my territory!”
  • David said, “That giant is no big deal!”
  • Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego said, “We like it hot!”
  • Nehemiah said, “Let’s rebuild this wall!”
  • Esther said, “If I die, I die!”

What are you saying? What are you praying? What is your faith laying hold to? What is the Holy Spirit daring your soul to see that your eyes cannot? Dare great things for God—do great things for God.

Going Deeper: Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!” (John 14:12-14) Ask for some big things today!