Fear or Hope? The Most Important Choice You Make Every DaySample

We choose what we will focus on daily with our time and energy. It's one of the most significant choices we make.

The spies had this same choice. Numbers 13 shows us what they chose as they returned from a 40-day journey throughout the Promised Land. After acknowledging the good things they found in the land, the spies focused on all of the obstacles that stood in their way. Their report is riddled with fear, and their conclusion makes that clear: "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are."

Because the spies saw literal giants in the land, found large and fortified cities, and discovered great warriors, they returned and spread a report to persuade the people not to enter the land God promised them.

I've noticed this as I've read this story again and again: Our temptation has always been to focus on the size of the problem rather than on God's provision. This temptation is not a new challenge that we're facing today. It goes back to the events described in Numbers 13, over 3,000 years ago.

We are tempted to focus on the size of our problems rather than on God's provision. Like spies, we take all of our experiences, opportunities, advantages, and disadvantages and turn those pieces into a story that we tell other people and ourselves. All too often, that story focuses on all our problems rather than God's power.

When I was in my "angry phase" as my wife described it, the story I told was primarily about the size of my problems. Everything changed one day when I stumbled upon an article while scrolling the internet. In that story, the writer included an image representing the fear of the economy. It was a picture of a knob like the one in the shower that you turn to change the temperature of the water labeled "fear." I asked a graphic designer I knew to create some artwork for me. He created the art that you see in the image in this plan's description, a fear knob and a hope knob.

In those days, I realized I had turned fear as far as it would go. Fear was intense in me, and fear flooded out of me because I focused on the size of my problems. Then, my friend I told you about earlier approached me and said, "Scott, where's the hope?"

I began to feel like God was speaking to my heart, and He seemed to ask me, "Scott, are you going to be a voice of fear, or are you going to be a voice of hope? Are you going to turn the fear knob, or are you going to turn the hope knob?" During that season, I committed to being a voice of hope. I not only want to have God's hope; I want to have God's hope be loud through me.

If you want the same to be true for you, you need to focus on God's solution and provision. When you open the next day of this plan, you'll see how two hope dealers refused to let others' responses diminish their trust in God.