You Are Not a Grasshopper

I don’t really mean to, but sometimes I find myself identifying with the twelve spies who were sent to check out the promised land. The majority brought back this report about the Nephilim they saw in the land: “We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers 13:22).

It all came down to their view of themselves and their assumptions about how the people of the land perceived them. In some ways, we can’t blame them. They had suffered as slaves for so long that it was easy to see themselves as insignificant. They had a victim mentality.

Recently I was with a group that took a quiz to see if a victim mentality was putting us at risk for anxiety. I was amazed at how easily I can see myself as a victim. So I can identify with the mindset of 10 of the spies. Despite all the proofs God had shown them of his power, they were still held hostage by their own perceptions of themselves and their sense of how others viewed them. 

Even though a mighty God had freed them, they were so used to feeling helpless that they didn’t recognize the options they had. They were still living in the “victim” narrative, which prevented them from reaching out to clasp the hand of the mighty God to whom they belonged. They were calculating the extent of their own strength, not his. May we keep reminding ourselves that in him we are victors because of his victory.