Day Twenty-One
31 But the other men who had explored the land with him disagreed. “We can’t go up against them! They are stronger than we are!” 32 So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites
Think about the implications behind this verse, it is sad on so many levels!
They didn’t believe or trust God’s Word.
They allowed what they saw to influence their faith.
They spread a bad report.
Their report caused them to miss out on what God had promised them.
Their report caused 100’s of thousands of people to die in the wilderness without ever receiving their promise.
All because of their words!! There will always be bad reports, but this is a sober reminder to all of us to not spread them, and not allow a bad report to affect what we think or do. There are always people who will doubt, always people who will tell you why you shouldn’t move forward, always people who will leave churches and gossip about why. We need to be people who stop bad reports in their tracks and get another opinion.
There were over 1 million people in the Israelite camp and the bad report spread like wildfire. Each one of those people had the choice to believe the report and pass it on or let it stop with them. It really was a choice between life and death, between stepping into God’s promise or shrinking back and never seeing it.
As we come into our building program this year let’s be a people who are conscious of the power of our words to bring life or to0 bring death. Let’s spread good reports and stop bad ones in their tracks, let’s build a runway for God to do incredible things for future generations at Influencers.