“But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.”
~ Numbers 14:24
Hi James and Ellen,
Could your grandmaa and grandpaa have decided not to start out on a track to be missionaries? Could your grandmaa and grandpaa have decided to stay living in Aberdeen, South Dakota? Your grandmaa and grandpaa had been able to buy a house in Aberdeen after your grandpaa was asked by Beneficial Finance to transfer to Aberdeen to manage their Aberdeen office. Your grandpaa enjoyed managing Aberdeen’s Beneficial Finance office. Your grandmaa and grandpaa enjoyed being members of the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church. Your grandmaa and grandpaa lived for only two years in Aberdeen. Over the two years that your grandmaa and grandpaa lived in Aberdeen, they became more and more involved in the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church. During the two years that your grandmaa and grandpaa lived in Aberdeen, your grandmaa and grandpaa had several of the guys and gals who were also members of the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church befriend them. The track that your grandmaa and grandpaa had God put them on to become missionaries began one evening during the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church’s annual missions conference. Larry Wright – who was a Christian & Missionary Alliance missionary, was the guest speaker during the ‘73 missions conference. Your grandpaa that evening could not ignore the still, small voice of God calling him to take your grandmaa, dad and Aunt Lynn to another country. Your grandpaa could not stand up that evening with most every other guy and gal who was in the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church. Your grandmaa was not happy at all with your grandpaa that evening when your grandpaa did not stand up when most every other guy and gal who was in the Aberdeen Christian & Missionary Alliance Church stood up to show to their kids that they would support them if they ever felt called by God to be a missionary. If your grandmaa and grandpaa knew over thirty years ago – or forty-five years ago at the time of this editing, in retrospect what God would take them through to be missionaries your grandmaa and grandpaa would not be nearly as ready to start out on the track that God put them on to become missionaries. Your grandmaa and grandpaa know though that God would not have allowed them to ignore His call.
When God’s specially chosen guys and gals started out on a trek about 3450 years ago for a land area that God had promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their descendants would always have to live in as their very own land, God’s specially chosen guys and gals had no clue that they would be over the next forty years facing all kinds of hardships. God’s specially chosen guys and gals – when they started out on the long, arduous trek towards a land that they knew very little if anything about, had not been totally convinced why they should leave Egypt where they were living relatively comfortably is spite of being used as slaves by Egyptian guys. When God’s specially chosen guys and gals neared the land area that they had been told that they would always have to live in as their very own land, Moses sent twelve guys into the land area to spy out the land. Each Israelite people group tribal clan supplied a guy to go into the land area that was to become their land to find out what the land was like and what kind of guys lived in the land area. After spending forty days spying out the land area that they were told that they would always have to live in as their very own land, the twelve guys returned to their sending base. Numbers 14 is the response of God’s specially chosen guys and gals to what ten of the twelve spies saw while in the land area that they were told that they would always have to live in as their very own land. Ten of the twelve guys returned with a report that said it would be impossible to conquer the land area because there were monster giants living in the land area while the other two guys returned with a report that said that the land area had everything in it that a guy or gal would ever want to have. These two guys came back convinced that God was with them and that He would help them take over the land area. The ten guys who returned with a negative report were the guys who were listened to and . . . God would kill these ten guys with a plague. The rest of God’s specially chosen guys and gals who were twenty years old and older were told by God – through Moses, that they would over the next forty years all die in the desert. God having His specially chosen guys, gals and kids wander for forty years in a miserably hot and barren desert was His punishment of one year for each of the forty days that the twelve spies spent in the land that they would have been able to go into at that time if they had listened to Him and done what He had asked them to do.
Two guys – Joshua and Caleb, were not given the death sentence that every other guy and gal twenty years old and older had been given of having to die in the desert sometime over the next forty years. Joshua and Caleb were the two guys who came back after spending forty days spying out the land area that God had told His specially chosen guys and gals that they would always have to live in as their very own land with a report that with God’s help that the land area was ready for the taking. Verse 24 says, “But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.” God expects His still, small voice to be obeyed. Your grandmaa and grandpaa know that they need to be always faithful to be obedient to God’s still, small voice that is leading them in His perfect will. Your grandmaa and grandpaa want to be led by God just as God led Caleb. Caleb is one of your grandpaa’s favorite characters in the Bible. You will never go wrong when you pull a Caleb. Your grandmaa and grandpaa are glad that God led them to be missionaries.
Numbers 14 (505)