Grasshoppers and Giants
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For several years, I had a roommate with a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Rafiki. Ridgebacks are large, muscular dogs with a ridge of fur running against the grain along their spine—the “ridge” of the ridgeback. Though traditionally bred to fight lions, Rafiki mostly lazed around the yard, moving from sun spot to sun spot.
Rafiki had one major quirk: He didn’t understand his size. Dogs typically squeeze out of any open door to get outside. Not Rafiki. Rafiki stood patiently waiting for us to open the door to the size he thought he was before dashing into the yard. Because Rafiki didn’t understand his true size, he stood in front of an open door for minutes at a time “confined” to the house. Likewise, when we don’t understand our spiritual size, we are frozen in place instead of running into the fullness of God’s promises for us.
Our sense of size is of great spiritual importance. Many of us raised in the church were told time and again about the dangers of pride and of thinking too highly of ourselves. This is true. So is the converse. Thinking too lowly of ourselves will keep us from living out the call on our lives and possessing God’s promises to us.
A wrong sense of spiritual size is one of the greatest inhibitors to seeing all that Jesus won at the cross manifest in our world. In other words, the amount of the Kingdom of heaven I see on earth and in my life is directly proportional to how I perceive my size in Christ. When our thoughts about our spiritual size aren’t aligned to the word of God, we freeze at our destiny’s doorway.
This is happened to the children of Israel.
For over 400 years, the children of Israel knew God had given them the promised land. Time after miraculous time, God demonstrated his might and power: he freed the slaves, healed them overnight and equipped them financially (see Ps. 105:37). God turned a dead-end into a dramatic sea crossing, fed them in a desert, appeared as a cloud by day and fire by night for their protection and guidance, and if that wasn’t enough, he gave them one of history’s greatest leaders to direct them. But then, on the doorstep of the promised land, with all of that miraculous momentum behind them, the children of Israel froze.
Returning from spying out the promised land, ten of the spies gave the now infamous report: “There we also saw the Nephilim [giants]; and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (Num. 13:33, NASB). Instead of seeing themselves through the lens of what God said and his promises, they judged themselves from their own understanding—I daresay, something we often do labeling it as “wise” or “realistic.”
Grasshoppers don’t fight giants. Grasshoppers also can’t inherit promises. Grasshoppers don’t possess a spirit of power, love, or a sound mind. They are blown about by the wind and easily squished under foot.
Spiritual self-perception matters.
Correct view of my spiritual size is second only to correctly understanding how great, loving, holy, worthy, and good my God is. When I correctly see myself through the lens of who God says I am, I am authorized, enabled and empowered to see his kingdom come here and now in my life. There may be giants standing between me and God’s promises, but I am no grasshopper—I am a mighty child of God with the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead inside of me (see Rom. 8:11).
Today many giants have risen from their slumber and seem to stand between us and God’s promises. It is time for us to stand up and say like Caleb to the children of Israel, “do not be afraid [of the giants] because we will devour them” (Num. 14:9, NIV). The battle at hand is to see and speak according to God’s perspective.
This is our hour. Giant-killers are rising. Join King David, history’s most famous giant killer, asking God to reveal any grasshopper-sized thinking that may be limiting you from seeing yourself the way God sees you. The truth is you were born to slay giants.
Pray with me:
God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart.
Examine me through and through;
find out everything that may be hidden within me.
Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares.
See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on,
and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—
the path that brings me back to you.
Psalm 139:23,24 (PTL)