Its been a great week. I have to say, life is good. Mark turns 10 tomorrow and we had a "Fear Factor" birthday party for him today. Jan organized it all. My part was to create an obstacle course in the backyard. It was a great time.

We took the boys fishing yesterday at a nearby lake. We had a great time catching little white perch. Nothing we could keep, but great sport. Its nice to go fishing once in a while and catch something.

We had some more visitors at church yesterday. 16 since Christmas. Its neat to see.

Have a good week.

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First - a correction. In OnFire #50 , "There Be Dragons, Haaaaaaarrrr," I speculated about Joshua’s age. He was older than I thought. In Joshua 14:7-10, Caleb says he was forty when they explored the land. If he and Joshua were roughly the same age, then he was not in his twenties as I suggested. "I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land...."*

Next, let’s fast forward over the many victories which followed as Joshua led the Hebrew people to victory in the Promised Land. Joshua’s story is one of God’s strength in overcoming so many obstacles. City after city fell (see Joshua 12:7-24 for the list) and soon he was ready to divide the land.

We’ve been studying Joshua, but I need to point out Caleb. Caleb was the other spy who gave the minority report with Joshua (Numbers 13:30). Because of their faith, he and Joshua were the only ones from the former generation to enter the land. Now that the land was being divided, Caleb asked for Hebron, where the Anakites lived. You will remember that they were the people that the other spies were so afraid of 45 years earlier. They said, "We seemed like grasshoppers in their eyes." (Numbers 13:33)

Listen to Caleb’s courage at age 85 as he trusts in God: "Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said." (Joshua 14:12)

Caleb could have been content simply to go into some safe place in the land. He was old, 85, and he had earned the right to let younger men do the heavy work. But that’s not what he did. He asked for the city that the others feared most.

Why would Caleb do this? It was Caleb’s perspective. Others might have seen the Anakites as a big problem, but Caleb looked at problems through the eyes of faith.

The first hobby I actively pursued was photography. At age 14 I took my lifesavings of $250 to buy a 35mm camera. I don’t take many pictures now, but I still find the whole process interesting. If you hold a lense to your eye, you can make out an image. You have to hold it closely, but it works. If you turn the lense around and look through the big end, however, the image becomes really small. The principle is easier to see through a pair of binoculars - big one way, tiny the other.

This is exactly how the eyes of faith work. When we think we have to face something alone, many problems look large, maybe even too big. Its like we’re looking through binoculars. But when we remember that God goes with us (and actually is the one to fight the battles), problems look a lot smaller. Its like we’ve turned the binoculars around the other way.

Some saw giants, but Caleb saw them differently because he knew God was with him. It was like he had turned the lenses around. What looked so big to others looked tiny to him.

Maybe our problems aren’t as big as we think they are. If God is on our side, we don’t have to be afraid of the size of the problem because God goes with us.

Hope this helps. Be OnFire,

;Troy

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ON FIRE is a weekly letter of encouragement by Troy Dennis. This letter published April 10, 2006.