Saturday, May 02, 2015

The Way We See Ourselves

Numbers 13:33 KJV
And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

The ten spies were first, in their own eyes, as grasshoppers. Whether the people of the Canaan saw them that way is difficult to say. We do know that spies “felt” like they were perceived that way.

Oftentimes the way people see us is the way we see ourselves.
·       It might be due to our conduct
·       It may be the result of our own communication
We often project onto others the perception we have of ourselves.

But sometimes we believe others think of us one way when in truth they haven't thought that way at all. Our relationship with them is not effected by their perception of us but by our perception of ourselves.

Just forty years after the spies saw themselves as grasshoppers before the giants of Canaan, a younger generation of Israelites entered the Promised Land to take it. There was, at that time, little or no talk of giants[1]. This time the perception of the Canaanites concerning the Jews was fear of their God. They did not see Israel as grasshoppers. They saw them as the people of the living God.

Had Israel believed themselves to be the “people of God” forty years earlier they may have noticed that the Canaanites saw them that way too.




[1] Though we know they still existed.

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