Giants in the land?
Have a different spirit.
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It’s not something I imagine you read often, but the text in Numbers 14 is worth thinking about a few times today. Turn your bible app to Numbers; Caleb and Joshua have returned from the same land as the other ten men sent to spy out the land, but what do Caleb and Joshua see as they tip toe with the others in the shadows of a foreign land? Same ‘giants’. Same walled cities. Same geography. Nothing different about the terrain, but everything different about how they saw what was before them.
And when they bring a harrowing report, God responds, that they are basically not to worry, because they are not going to enter it. With a couple of exceptions; Joshua and Caleb. God explains, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land.”
A different spirit. Let that stir you today.
This isn’t about personality. Caleb isn’t braver by temperament or wired differently to the other ten. The distinction God draws is spiritual. The ten operated out of fear dressed up as realism. Perhaps we can call it lethargy. Caleb operated out of something the Spirit of God had placed in him. Faith rooted in who God is, not in a calculation of odds.
And as you look at the news later, you’ll be aware you are living in a moment that calls for exactly this.
Look around. The noise is constant. Wars and rumours of wars. Nations destabilised. Institutions that held for generations beginning to creak and shift like the bows of an old wooden ship. Jesus told us to expect it, and here it is. The question isn’t whether the world is unsettled. It is. The question is what spirit you’re bringing to it. You see, you matter.
Here’s the thing. The ten spies weren’t lying. The giants were real. The walls were high. Fear that calls itself wisdom is the most convincing kind, because it sounds so reasonable. “We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers,” they said. That’s the tell. The problem was never the size of the enemy. It was the size of God, as they were actually living it. They were looking at things, real things, real obstacles and threats in the wrong way. One day Joshua would be marching around a city for seven days… but our focus is on Caleb right now so that perhaps teh Holy Spirit will allow something to drop for you.
A different spirit changes what you see. Not literally. The giants don’t disappear. The uncertainty doesn’t lift, but when the Spirit of God is genuinely at work in you, the question shifts. It stops being “can we handle this?” and becomes “is God leading us through this?” Those are not quite the same question, and one of them has a very different answer.
Caleb followed God fully. Wholehearted. All the way in, regardless of the alarming consensus in the room.
That’s what you’re being called to right now.
Not heroics. Not having all the answers about what’s coming next. Just this: staying close enough to God that when the room gets loud and the report gets frightening, you still know what you heard, what you know and whose you are.
For Caleb (and Joshua) the land still needed taking, but the promise was still real. Forty long years on, Caleb walked in. At eighty-five years old, he stood at the edge of his inheritance and said, “give me this mountain.” The people who said it couldn’t be done were long gone.
You are not reading the Matthew 24 signs of the times so that you can panic with more to alarm you! You’re reading those signs because God wants you awake, grounded, and ready.
A different spirit. That’s the invitation in front of you right now. Be convinced with what you know from Scripture and the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Like Caleb, have a different spirit. One that says, “I believe God…”