Lessons from Caleb

“Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.”

-          Joshua 14:12

Forty-five years after he and Joshua spied out the land of Canaan and dutifully reported that while the peoples there were great, the Lord of Israel was greater, trust in the Lord still burned in Caleb. The confidence in the Lord’s power and faithfulness still drove his actions. From that faithfulness, Caleb recounts the vision the Lord had shown him and with confidence goes off to take what the Lord had promised him.

The life of Caleb should stand for us as a monument to faithfulness, trust, and confidence. It is the ultimate heroic story which ends with the eighty year old Caleb setting off to do battle and claim what was promised him.

In his youth he held firm to the Lord when his contemporaries were abandoning faith in fear. For forty years, as all of his contemporaries died, he held firm in his faith in the Lord and the promise. Now in his senior years his faith remained and he set out to take the Lord at His word, undaunted by the race of giants standing in the way.

I fear too many of us possess a weak, middling faith, one which we turn to as a last resort when all ‘rational’ attempts have failed; or one that serves as the ‘foundation’ for our character but is so weak and ineffective that it cannot affect change in our lives; or a compartmentalized faith that takes a back-seat to reason, one that needs to be instilled in the young but is ignored by the mature.

There are things we can learn from Caleb’s example. We can learn to take the Lord at His word. When the Lord told Moses that He would deliver the Promised Land to the people of Israel, all of Israel doubted save Joshua and Caleb. All save Joshua and Caleb, died with their dreams unfulfilled due to their doubt. Yet even after a lifetime of wandering in the desert Caleb maintained his resolve. He knew the power and faithfulness of the Lord deep in his soul. He knew that through the strength of the Lord he could accomplish impossible things. He knew it as a young man and he knew it when he was old. The Lord’s power knows no bounds and what those who trust in Him can accomplish knows no bounds. So let us stand, in youth or in age, and let us take the Lord at His word. Let us ask the Lord for a deeper, prevailing faith rooted in His goodness rather than the perceived odds of victory. Let us set out to fight the battles He has prepared for us.