What does God want from us? What are His expectations? I'm not going to get in to YOUR specific gifts, talents, or service that God has for you, but I can tell you how to find them! In exile, God sent a beautiful message to the Israelites through the prophet Jeremiah: 10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare[b] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29)" Over and over again, the people of God would seek after Him when things got rough, they'd turn from their idols, and cry out...but when things got good, they sought after their idols and began praising themselves. Sound familiar? The people that stand out to me most in both the Old and New Testaments are not the judges like Samson (though they did things through the Spirit of God), for such people often met with bad ends because they sought after their own desires...not, it's the people like Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, Caleb David, and the Prophets. Why? Because they sought after God wholeheartedly. What faith! They sought after God, ins spite of the odds, and God was with them their whole lives. That is the faith I desire. I wish to seek God with my whole heart. I do not care about the consequences. Like Abraham, I will leave all behind to follow the Lord. Like Joseph, I will risk slavery, false accusations, and prison for my God. Like Joshua and Caleb, I will stand against my entire generation to trust in my God, and like David, I will seek the Lord to become a man after His own heart. Could you imagine if believers everywhere sought the Lord with everything? What would your life look like if you trusted God completely?
Joshua 14:6-15 English Standard Version (ESV)
Caleb's Request and Inheritance
6 Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. 7 I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. 8 But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. 9 And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ 10 And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. 11 I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. 12 So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”
13 Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. 14 Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. 15 Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba.[a] (Arba[b] was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war.
Footnotes:
a Joshua 14:15 Kiriath-arba means the city of Arba
b Joshua 14:15 Hebrew He
Comments