Five Challenges for the New Year

Num. 13:1-12,17-20

1) Reprioritize your life
Focus on the Blessor (not really a word) not the blessings. It's about Jesus!! The 10 spies were concerned about the fruit of the land. How much, how big, etc. . .

2) Become a Risk-taker
Satan helps in building our walls. The walls need to come down in order for the reward to be maximized.

3) Embrace your struggles
If we can embrace the struggle, then we can learn the lesson, then we are able to give encouragement to those that may be going through the same thing. Struggles are good~they build us up so we can build up others. Think of all the men in the Bible who were NOT delivered from their struggle. Noah, Moses, Joseph with his bros., Samson, Daniel, even Christ. They had to go through the struggle to become life-changing agents for the Word of God.

4) Look Beyond your Circumstances
Faulty assumptions lead to faulty conclusions. When the spies took their eyes off Jesus, their focus became distorted. This lead to exaggeration about the people in the land and caused them to want to quit.

5) Envision the Extraordinary
God is so much bigger than we can possibly imagine. The spies forgot what God had said and their outlook was too small. Joshua was just an ordinary man but had extraordinary vision AND did something with his vision.

Dr.Tom Thompson-Shadow Mountain Community Church 1/03/10