But Who is God?

Read Numbers 13-15
 
Numbers 13:26-29 The 12 spies came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”
 
THE bounty that God promised is in Israel’s hand. The LORD God is prepared to bring them out of the desert where they have complained of God’s perceived shortcomings. The time has come to go to the fertile, plentiful place prepared for them.
    “But” is a big word in scripture for or against faith. Here it speaks of Israel’s fears and doubts. There is testimony of the land’s plenty. “But the people” focus on their enemies and envision defeat even as God’s promised conquest. Why did these Hebrew spies doubt God’s power to overcome? Had these witnesses to his power in Egypt forgotten? Did they doubt God’s power for their future? Doubt takes the fruit out of our hand and tosses it into the dust. Doubt locks us into the desert of destructive habits. Doubt creates the “but” to stop us from the promise. How do we stop and dismiss the doubt?
    We see an example through Caleb’s life-giving faith in Numbers 13:30 “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” Ten other spies were saying, “Don’t go.” Caleb believed in God, and he believed God. Caleb’s faith says, “Our enemies are many. But God is our all-powerful warrior.” Caleb knew who God is.
    Be sure you do, too. Be one who walks in God’s power, believing in what God has done and what he will do. When someone says, “I doubt God.” You can reply, “Here’s who God is: ‘When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead (Acts 13:29-30)’”
 
James 1:6-8 But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.