The Death of Unbelief

By: Ken Barnes, Author

“So give me the hill country that the Lord promised me. You will remember that as scouts we found the descendants of Anak living there in great, walled towns. But if the Lord is with me, I will drive them out of the land, just as the Lord said.” (Joshua 14:12 NLT)

Caleb was 85 years old and still had not received his promised inheritance. He asked for the land of the descendants of Anak, the giants, who had put fear and unbelief in the hearts of all Israel, save Joshua and himself. The fulfillment of the promise of God would not be complete if he did not conquer this part of the land and unbelief would remain in Israel.

The hill country, more than any other area, was the place that caused the ten spies to give their bad report. All the spies except Joshua and Caleb said, “We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. Next, to them, we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s what they thought, too!” (Numbers 13:33 NLT) Unbelief had made them small in their own eyes. This negative mental state was disastrous — all the Israelites died in the wilderness except for the two who gave a good report. Remember they were spies; they probably did not know what the giants were thinking.

You may not be what you think you are, but what you think, you are. What you believe others think about you is dependent on how you feel about yourself. But the strange thing is that neither one of them may be true. Only what God says about us is true. Caleb believed he would drive out the giants, “just as the Lord said.” (v.12)

Joshua had already captured the city of Hebron (Joshua 10-36-37 NLT) except the mountainous area within it. It was considered unconquerable, too fortified for any man to take, but not so for God. Caleb could have taken the lowland and lived securely off of the fruits of someone else’s conquests, but he said, “Give me the hill country” (v. 12). If Caleb could not take what God wanted to give him, he would take nothing at all. Why? It was all about the integrity of the promises of God. Caleb knew that what God had promised, he would do. If God had said it was his, then that settled it, whether he was 40 or 85-years-old.

Has God promised you your hill country? Are you getting older or is there an immovable object in your way? Over and over God told his people that he was giving them the land, now go in and fight for it. We like to think about receiving the land, but not so much about having to fight for it. In taking your inheritance, the battle is between faith and unbelief and the battleground is mainly in your mind. If God has spoken to you, take the inheritance that God is giving you, and put to death unbelief. If the Lord is with you, you cannot fail.