Opportunity is Here
| Posted in Bible | Posted on 09-14-2009
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opportunity |ˌäpərˈt(y)oōnitē|
a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something
I’ve been reading through the story of Moses and the Israelites over the past few weeks, and while working through Deuteronomy something in Moses’ writing tone has struck me. Deuteronomy seems to be a last will and testament for Moses to the children of Israel, and there is an overriding sense of regret out of Moses. Moses continually laments the missed opportunity of the Israelites to take the promised land 40 years earlier. For those needing to catch up on the story, when the Israelites left Egypt in a blaze of glory; they came to a moment in the wilderness where action was required of them to take the land promised to them. In Numbers 13, you can read the story of the spies returning from investigating this ‘promised land’ and you can read where overwhelmingly they convince the Israelites that they will never be able to take this ‘promised land.’
But the men who had gone with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”32 And those men gave the Israelites a bad report about the land they explored, saying, “The land that we explored is too large to conquer. All the people we saw are very tall.33 We saw the Nephilim people there. (The Anakites come from the Nephilim people.) We felt like grasshoppers, and we looked like grasshoppers to them.”
They totally missed it. This missed opportunity eventually led to them never getting a chance to see what God had for them. In Deuteronomy Moses is speaking to the children of these that missed the opportunity. I believe that there are two big fears that kept the Israelites from the great opportunity that was before them. And coincidentally enough, they are the same two fears that often times keep me from seizing opportunity when it presents itself.
Over the next two posts on www.jonathancliff.com I will be addressing the two fears, and what we can do to step over them into the set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.
Fun! I’m looking forward to more. :-)
Lisa Cash´s last blog ..You Can’t Hurry Love
[...] Yesterday I addressed the idea of seizing opportunities that are in front of us, and how we often let two fears keep us from taking hold of those set of circumstances that enable us to do something amazing. The first fear that leads to us missing opportunities is the fear of our own weakness. Numbers 13:31 “They are stronger than us…” [...]
[...] In a previous post I addressed the idea of seizing opportunities, and the two fears that keep us from grasping those opportunities when they come available. The first fear that leads to us missing opportunities is the fear of our own weakness. The second fear is the all too common fear of commitment. Numbers 13:32 “The land is too large to conquer.” [...]