Contagious Negativity

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Southeast Christian ChurchSoutheast Christian Church

Mar 10, 2021

Hopelessness, pessimism, and criticism have a way of spreading like wild fire. When the twelve spies returned from the Promised Land, ten of them immediately spread negativity that infected everyone. The group took on the perspective of those ten spies and collectively forgot all that God had done for them to fulfill his promises and get them to this point.

With this perspective, they were angry with God and distrusted his word. They put down the weapons of God, picked up the weapons of the world, and found that their strength won’t be enough. Satan would like us to believe that this kind of negative perspective is “realistic” so that we take our eyes off of God and onto our circumstances. Satan wants us to look at our circumstances, our strength, our resources, and ask, “Did God really say?” If he can get us to distrust God, he can get us to do anything.

But Joshua and Caleb keep a perspective that sees their situation through the truth of God. While the ten spies returned with reasons to be afraid, Joshua and Caleb returned with assurance of victory. All twelve spies saw the same thing, but only two saw it from God’s perspective. It’s easy to roll our eyes at the ten and side with the two, until we realize that we are more like the ten in our own lives.

We look at our circumstances, our time, our resources, our situation and forget God completely. But God looks at our circumstances, our time, our resources, our situation and he sees something different. He sees his promise to never leave us, to finish his work in us, to give us grace in our time of need, to give us hope and a future. We don’t have to fall victim to the hopelessness that is spreading like a disease in our world. We can cling to God, knowing that he will give us his perspective in all circumstances.

Reflection/Discussion Question: When do you find yourself most often falling into a hopeless, pessimistic, or critical perspective?

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