(This devotional is dedicated to my friend, Warren “Ski” Milanowski, who has faithfully served God as a chaplain at the Boise Airport and just lost his wife. God sees your belief, my friend!)

We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

--Parallel verses:
‭‭Numbers‬ ‭14‬:‭20‬-‭25‬
The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea.”

Why is unbelief such a terrible sin? It is because it at once rejects the purposes and helping hands of God and leaves us to wallow, complain, and become bitter in life. We become self-focused and ineffective when we give unbelief or doubt a foothold.

Doubt doubles down,
Fear abounds.
Joy is frustrated,
Adventure drowns.

True belief fills my heart with hope and joy in Christ my Savior. And this belief is a lasting and necessary component to life with God. Without belief we will not be willing to follow God into the unknown areas of growth in life. God is an adventurous God, and he challenges his followers to take risks in life and trust him with the results. When we take risks prompted by God’s Spirit, God is pleased with our faith in him.

Now the risks may not always seem to be everything that we dreamed they would be. Take the Israelites when they were waiting to enter the promised land. They had to wait for Moses to hear from God on Mount Sanai. “When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’” (‭‭Exodus‬ ‭32‬:‭1‬)

They doubted God, by doubting Moses, their leader, who was God’s messenger to them. So, instead they asked Aaron to make them another god, a golden calf. And this lack of faith and act of rebellion cost many of them their lives, as God caused a plague of snakes to poison them.

Then again, as the cross reference mentions, they came to the promised land and sent in spies to survey the land. They came back and reported that there were giants in the land. Of the twelve spies, only two — Joshua and Caleb — trusted God to give them victory over the giants in the land. And so God judged the Israelites and required them to wander for 40 years in the desert. All of the adults died in the desert, except Caleb and Joshua — they were the only ones who escaped Egypt and actually got to see the land God promised.

What is the land God has promised me? Is it not a spiritual land of “milk and honey”? A land where the sweet fruits are the lives changed by Jesus Christ and the souls changed for good into eternity!

I must believe him that his plans are good and true, and that he will always, always follow through!

Lord, thank you for the faith you are growing, reinforcing, and strengthening in me. I choose to believe. I believe in the things of you that seem crazy to others. I believe when all hope seems lost. And I especially believe “all the more” when I get uprooted in life. Because in the trials, your light SHINES BRIGHTER through me.