You do not see things as they are. You see things as you are. Let me say that again: you do not see things as they are; you see things as you are. Changing your world has a great deal to do with changing how you see yourself — and that has everything to do with your understanding of how God sees you. Jesus said we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and perceive with our hearts, and there is a story in the book of Numbers that shows this truth more clearly than almost any other.
A People Raised in Slavery
As written in Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life” (NKJV).
Let us step back for a moment. The people of Israel had been in Egypt for about 430 years. That means the people who came out of Egypt were slaves, their fathers were slaves, their grandfathers were slaves, and their great-grandfathers were slaves. They had no living memory of anything else. They had been slaves for as long as they knew.
I want you to catch this. They were brought up, quite literally, with a poverty mentality. Imagine that every day your primary motivation is finding enough food to stop your stomach from grumbling and to feed your children, finding straw to make bricks for your masters, and avoiding the Egyptian whip. They carried slave thoughts, slave perceptions, and slave realities. It was not only how they had grown up; it had been embedded within them.
God came and supernaturally delivered them out of Egypt. Bang! They were free on the other side of the Red Sea — yet they were not free on the inside. For nearly forty years they wandered in the desert, still looking and thinking like slaves rather than free men.
An Eleven-Day Journey That Took Forty Years
Here is an interesting thought: how long does it take to walk from Egypt into the Promised Land? You can look it up on a map if you like. As Deuteronomy 1:2–3 tells us, “It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. Now it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month…” (NKJV). For the sake of neatness, let us call it an eleven-day journey that took forty years.
That is very strange. Something was wrong. Did God want them to go through a desert? Yes, He did. I believe God wanted to deliver them, and I believe God wanted to give them the Law of Moses. Scripture shows that God wanted to bring the whole people — some two to three million of them — into His presence. Moses, Joshua, and the seventy elders went up the mountain, and the elders saw the God of Israel. Many of them stopped there, as if to say, “We have reached the pinnacle of our spiritual life.” Moses kept going and walked into the glory of God. Exodus 24:10 says of the elders, “They saw the God of Israel” (NKJV). Yet Exodus 24:18 tells us that “Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain,” and he was there “forty days and forty nights” (NKJV) — a forty-day fast with no water, because he was in the presence of God.
The point I want you to grasp is this: something in the heart of this people — and the heart is the heart of the matter — was hindering them from entering the Promised Land.
Twelve Spies, One Tour, Two Reports
Early in that season in the desert, Moses took one representative from each of the twelve tribes and sent them in to spy out the land. Joshua and Caleb were among them. Moses said, in effect, “See what it is like. Does it match what God said? Does it flow with milk and honey? What are the inhabitants like? Tell us what you see.”
Notice this. The Bible does not say that Joshua and Caleb went north while the other ten went south. They saw the same things. They saw the same grapes. They saw the same cities. They saw the same giants and the same houses. They took the same bus tour of Israel, so to speak — they flew into the same airport and drove through the same valleys. They saw exactly the same land.
Yet when they returned, they gave two completely different reports. You see with your eye, but you perceive with your heart. The reports they gave had far less to do with the facts on the ground than with the facts in the heart.
Joshua and Caleb came back saying, “This is an amazing land. Hallelujah! If God is before us, it is game over. We can do this. We can take this. It is glorious. Thank God — all of His promises are waiting for us. Let us go in and take it.” As Numbers 13:30 records, “Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, ‘Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it'” (NKJV).
The other ten spies came back saying, “The giants — we cannot do this.” As Numbers 13:33 records, “There we saw the giants… and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (NKJV). In our own sight. In our own perception. They talked about the giants, but in reality they were talking about themselves — their perception of who they were.
Why the Report Was Evil
What is striking is that every single thing the ten said about the Promised Land was accurate. God never said, “You lied.” Yet Scripture calls their report an evil report (Numbers 13:32; “a bad report” in the NKJV). Why? Hebrews 3:12 gives us the answer: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God” (NKJV). Unbelief is evil.
It was evil because it contradicted what God had already said about the land. God had said, “I have given you this land.” Consider this: all twelve spies had been delivered from Egypt. They were all citizens of Israel. They were all leaders. They took the same tour and saw the same things — yet they brought two different reports. Why? Because they had two different hearts, if I can put it that way. The heart of the ten was not like the heart of Joshua and Caleb. God Himself said of Caleb in Numbers 14:24, “But My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it” (NKJV). A different spirit produced a different report.
If you know your Bible well, you will remember that not even Moses eventually entered the Promised Land. Of that generation, only two went in: Joshua and Caleb.
Your Promised Land
I tell you, God has an incredible promised land for every believer on planet Earth. He may well have real estate for you — I believe that. More than any piece of real estate, though, He has purposes and promises for you. He has things He desires to do in you and through you. He offers you everything Jesus ever lived and experienced. The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become the sons of God.
Jesus gave up everything at Calvary, and He offers you that promised land: not merely a piece of land in Israel, but the very relationship He had with the Father throughout all eternity. In John 17:22 Jesus prays, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one” (NKJV). Wow. All of that has been given to us.
Yet the thing that determines whether we will enter our promised land is the perception of our hearts. You do not see with your eyes; you perceive with your heart. What you see is filtered through the belief structure of your heart. To see differently with the eye, we need a transformation of the heart.
Let me challenge you: when you look at the promises of God and the giants that seem to stand in the way, whose report are you bringing back? The facts on the ground may be the same for everyone. The facts in your heart will decide whether you wander or whether you go in and take possession. Ask the Lord to show you how He sees you, how He sees the land He has given you, and how He sees the giants. When your heart begins to agree with what God has already said, your report will change — and so will your direction.
Scriptures for Study
Numbers 13:1-3, Numbers 13:25-33, Numbers 14:6-9, Numbers 14:22-24, Numbers 14:30, Numbers 32:12, Deuteronomy 1:2-3, Exodus 12:40-41, Exodus 14:21-22, Exodus 24:9-18, Exodus 34:28, Joshua 14:6-14, Hebrews 3:12, Hebrews 3:17-19, Hebrews 4:1-2, Proverbs 4:23, Proverbs 23:7, John 17:5, John 17:22-24, Romans 8:15-17, Galatians 4:6-7, 2 Corinthians 4:13, 1 John 3:1-2, 1 John 5:4, Joshua 1:3
10 Questions for Reflection
- What does it mean to you that you see things as you are, not as they are?
- In what areas might you still be thinking like a slave, even though Christ has set you free?
- What “eleven-day journeys” in your life have stretched into years, and what might the heart issue be?
- Like the elders who stopped on the mountain, where might you have settled short of the presence of God?
- Why did the ten spies and the two spies bring such different reports from the same land?
- When you face “giants,” do you talk more about the giants or about God’s promise?
- How do you see yourself — as a grasshopper or as one who is well able to overcome?
- Why does Scripture call a factually accurate report evil?
- What promises and purposes has God placed before you as your promised land?
- What would a transformation of your heart change about the way you see your circumstances?
