While we had our grand
children with us, Micah and Simeon were watching intently some of the videos of
Mt. McKinley and Mount Everest. They were curious, even thrilled, and somehow
saying, "We want those mountains".
A study of two hundred life
histories of outstanding people revealed that they had ordered lives which were
steered toward selected goals. Each person had something to live for. Another
study of people who committed suicide indicated that they felt their lives had
become intolerable because they had nothing to aim for, no goal to seek. Goals,
or lack of them, were the difference.
It is written
in Numbers 13 that
ten of the twelve spies (sent
out by Moses to spy out the promised land) reported to Moses that the land was
full of giants. "There is no way," they declared, "that we can take possession
of the land." Two of the scouts, however,
believed that with God on their side, no goal was beyond their grasp. "Let us
go up at once and possess the land," they said, "for we are well able to do it"
(Numbers 13:30). One of these two was Joshua,
who would lead the Hebrews into the promised land forty years later. The other
was Caleb.
It is
written in Joshua 14 that forty-five years had gone by
since the other incident when the Israelites moved into the promised land.
Caleb, 85 years old at that time, said to Joshua, "God promised that Hebron
belonged to me. And now I want that mountain!" When Caleb and Joshua had
returned from scouting the land, Moses made this promise to Caleb: "Surely the
land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance to you and to your
children forever." God said, "Caleb, this land is
for you. It is my plan for you to posses this land." Caleb's goal, then, was
to claim what God had already promised.
Caleb said in
Joshua 14:10, "And now behold, the Lord has
let me live, just as he spoke, these 45 years, from the time that the Lord spoke
this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness, and now behold, I am
85 years old today." Eighty-five years old! That's the time most people are
sitting back and settling in, but it was not so for Caleb! At 85, after a
lifetime in which Caleb had "followed the Lord ... wholeheartedly" (Joshua
14:14), he set his eyes on the land
of Hebron and said, "I want that mountain!"
The point is that we are
never too old to set new goals, to set out for new horizons, to begin new quests
with Jesus our Lord and the Captain. I read sometime ago that
Michelangelo completed his
greatest work of art at age 87.
Albert Schweitzer still headed
his hospital in Africa at the age of 89.
Indeed, we are never too
old to set goals. For each of us, there is a land
of Hebron that God has set before us and His desire for each of us is that we
stand up and declare, "I want that mountain!" Reaching our goals will not be
easy. It wasn't for Caleb and it won't be for us. For Caleb to claim his
mountain, he had to run the giants out of the land. As we strive to reach our
goals and as we attempt to claim our mountain there will also be giants that we
will have to overcome. Among those giants will be the giants
of adversity, failure, and
laziness.
In Joshua 14:12 Caleb said,
"You yourself heard then that the Amalekites were there, and their cities were
large and fortified, but the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he
said" The key phrase here is, "The Lord helping me". The
factor which will determine whether or not we reach our goals is not our
strength or weakness. The answer lies ultimately in the use of God's power. In
the Bible, those who reached their goals seemed to do so in spite of their own
weaknesses.
Moses, a tongue-tied
shepherd, stood up to Pharaoh and won! Gideon, supported by an army of
300 armed only with trumpets and empty jars, fought the Midianites and won!
David, untrained and
unprotected, challenged Goliath and won! The early disciples set out to
conquer the Roman world with nothing but the Gospel and they
won!
"Somehow Jesus comes and gives us
the victory".
In Christ,
Brown
