Are You Being Realistic… or Being Faithful?

0:18 Let me start by saying something that might land a little differently than you expect today. Being realistic is one of the most socially acceptable ways to talk yourself out of faith. We say it all the time. I'd love to believe this could change, but I have to be realistic. Or I'm not giving up. I'm just being realistic about what's possible. Or maybe sometimes we even say, I trust God, but realistically, I don't see how this is going to work. And here's what makes it so tricky. That actually sounds wise when we say it.

1:01 It sounds grounded, and it sounds like the responsible, mature, level-headed thing to say. But I want to ask you something today that I think is worth sitting with for just a few minutes. When you say, I'm just being realistic, whose reality are you referring to? Because there's your reality and then there's God's reality. And those two things are not always the same. Welcome to my question for you. I'm Melissa, and today we are in part three of our series called The Language of Faith.

1:43 Each week, we've been slowing down to look at the everyday phrases we reach for when life feels a little uncertain. Because the way we speak about God, not in our polished Sunday after church language, but in our real unscripted moments, it's that way that we're speaking that reveals what we actually believe about God. In part one, if you think back, we asked, are you hoping or are you just wishing? And then in part two last week, we looked at whether our confidence is actually faith or if it's just optimism wearing a spiritual outfit.

2:24 And today, today we're looking at a phrase that can quietly masquerade itself as wisdom, a phrase that sounds responsible and measured and even a little humble. My question for you today is this Is your realism rooted in what God can do or only in what you can see? Okay, so let's talk about this for a second because I want to be really clear about what I'm not saying.

3:06 There's nothing inherently wrong with being grounded. Wisdom matters, discernment matters. Counting the cost before you leap into something, that matters. Jesus himself talked about the importance of sitting down and calculating before you build a tower. So this isn't about pretending problems don't exist or walking around in some kind of a spiritual bubble where nothing bad can touch you. But here's what I've been noticing. In my own life, and honestly in conversations that I've been having with so many of you lately, there is a particular kind of realism that quietly becomes a ceiling.

3:51 Where instead of assessing a situation honestly and then bringing God into it, we assess the situation, we calculate the cost, and then conclude what God can and cannot do, all based on what we can and cannot see. And that is where realism stops being wisdom and starts becoming a substitute for our faith. And it's subtle. It genuinely does not feel like unbelief when you think about it. It doesn't feel like doubt, it feels like experience, like hard-earned perspective. It feels like you're finally being responsible about your own heart.

4:36 But here's the question underneath the question today. If God is limited by what you think is possible, is He really God? Trust me, I'm not asking you that to be provocative. I'm not asking it because I think that it might stir something up or get people talking. I'm asking it because I have had to ask it to myself more times than I'm comfortable admitting. Because it is so easy, especially after after you've been through something, um, after a prayer that felt unanswered or after a door that stayed closed longer than you expected.

5:20 It is so easy to start narrowing your expectations without even realizing that you're doing it. And we call it maturity. Sometimes we even call it growth. We call it not setting ourselves up for disappointment, but sometimes what it actually is is a ceiling that we've placed on what we believe God can do. So I want to take you to a story in scripture that I think captures this so perfectly. And I love this story because the people in it are not villains. They're not bad guys.

6:00 They are just honest. They're just being real or realistic. We're in Numbers chapter 13. God has been leading the Israelites toward the land he promised them, a land flowing with milk and honey. We know the story. And they're close. They can almost see it. And Moses sends twelve spies ahead of them to scout things out before they move in. Twelve men, same mission, same land, same forty days of walking through it, eating the fruit, and studying the terrain. And yet they come back and give their report.

6:44 Ten of them say this We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We can't attack those people. They are stronger than we are. And then, and this is the line that stops me every time. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them. That's in Numbers chapter 13, verse 33.

7:26 Now, they were being realistic. They had data, they had evidence, they had spent 40 days walking through that land with their very own feet. By every measurable standard, they were right. The giants were real, the fortified cities were real, the size difference was real. But they made one critical error. They sized up the giants without factoring in God. They had watched God part the Red Sea. They had eaten manna, the bread that had appeared out of nowhere every single morning.

8:06 They had followed a pillar of fire through a desert. And somehow, standing at the edge of the promised land, they looked at what was in front of them and they did the math without including the most important part. Two of the twelve spies, Caleb and Joshua, came back with a completely different report. Not because they saw things that were different than the other ten saw. They walked the same land, they saw the same giants. But Caleb stood up in front of the whole assembly and said, We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.

8:51 Now, same giants, same fortified cities, same impossible odds, but different faith. And here's what I don't want you to miss. The ten spies were not bad people. They were not being dramatic or intentionally faithless faithless. They were doing exactly what felt responsible. They were being realistic about what they had seen. But their realism was only anchored to their own capacity, and it left God completely out of the equation. That's the danger. Not that we see things clearly, but that we forget who is standing with us when we do.

9:38 But here's the thing that I want you to just sit with for a second, because I think there's something even deeper happening in that verse that I really don't want to rush past. Let's go back to the verse that says, We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes. Before they ever worried about how the giants saw them, they had already shrunk themselves. And isn't that uh just incredibly honest? Because I think we do this constantly. We look at the obstacle, we look at ourselves, and then we compare the two. We do the math, and before God ever gets a word in, we have already reached a verdict about our own smallness.

10:25 We say things like, I'm not qualified enough for that. Um, I've tried this before and it didn't work. People like me don't get outcomes like that. I've been praying about this too long for it to be possible. And we call it being realistic. But sometimes what is actually happening underneath all of that is a grasshopper mentality, a deeply held, maybe even deeply buried belief about our own smallness that we have never brought to God and said, is this actually true?

11:05 Or is this just fear with a good vocabulary? Am I just dressing up words? Because here's the thing about the ten spies, they weren't wrong about the giants. The giants were exactly as big as they said they were. But they were wrong about one thing. They forgot about the God who had already parted seas and rained down bread from heaven and led them by a pillar of fire. They had seen what God could do. They had firsthand experience of his faithfulness. They just forgot to factor it in when the situation got scary.

11:48 And I think we do the same thing. We have our own history with God. Moments where he came through, where something shifted that had no business shifting, where a door opened that you weren't sure was ever going to open. And then a new hard thing comes along. And somehow all of that history starts to get a little quiet. And we start doing the math again. We start trying to figure it out in our own head. We start just being real. So here's where I want to flip this, because I think there is a kind of realism that is holy. And it looks like this. If we go to uh Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9, it says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

12:39 As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. God isn't saying your circumstances aren't real. He's not saying the giants aren't tall. He is saying your frame is too small. When we say I'm being realistic, what we're often actually saying is I'm anchoring myself to what is visible, to what is measurable, and within the scope of my understanding. And what God is saying in Isaiah chapter 55 is that's a very limited reality that you're working from.

13:27 God is trying to remind us that his ways are higher, that his thoughts don't run on our logic. What looks finished from where you're standing is not finished from where I'm standing. What looks like a closed door to you might be a hallway that God is still walking you through. That is a different kind of realism, a bigger realism, one that is honest about the hard thing in front of you and convinced about the God who is behind you, the God who's standing right beside you. You know, I love how Caleb and Joshua model this so clearly.

14:10 They are not pretending the giants don't exist. They know it, they've seen them. They're not skipping through the land saying everything looks great and there are no problems. They see it all. They see it plainly. And they still come back and say, we can do this. Not because the odds had changed, but because they knew who was standing with them. Biblical realism isn't the absence of difficulty, it's the presence of God factored into that difficulty. Now, I want to stay here for a minute because I don't want to leave you with the wrong takeaway.

14:51 Because there is a version of this that's wisdom. And I think it's important to be able to tell the difference. There is a holy version of realism. There's a kind of careful, prayerful discernment that looks at a situation honestly and then says, okay, God, what do you want me to do with what I'm seeing here? That is wisdom. That is good stewardship. That is using the mind God gave you in the way He intended for you to use it. But there is also a fear-based version, the version that looks like wisdom, but is really self-protection with a spiritual label on it.

15:36 The version where I'm being realistic is how we quietly close a door God never told us to close. It's where we cite our circumstances as the reason we've stopped praying about something, where we've decided what's possible and parked there. And here's the diagnostic question I keep coming back to. And honestly, it's the question I want to give you today. Is your realism leading you toward God or away from Him? Genuine discernment keeps you in a conversation with God even when things look hard.

16:17 It says, I see this, I don't understand it, I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I am staying in the conversation. Doubt dressed as realism ends the conversation before God gets a word in. It makes the assessment, it reaches the verdict, and it files the outcome under just being realistic, and then it moves on. And I don't say that to make you feel guilty about the times you've done that. I've done that myself. I say it because I have done that, and I think a lot of us have too. So I just want you to know you're not alone in that train of thought.

17:02 But I also think there's something really freeing about naming it. Because once you can see it, you can bring it to God instead of just carrying it around as a conclusion. So let me bring this home because I want this to land somewhere practical for you this week. Maybe there's a dream you quietly retired because it stopped looking plausible. You just couldn't see how it could ever possibly happen. Maybe there's a prayer you've stopped praying because it's been so long and nothing seems to be moving. Maybe there's a relationship, a situation, a hope, something you have filed under.

17:47 I need to be realistic about this. I'm not here to tell you to ignore what you see. I'm not asking you to pretend the giants aren't there. I'm asking you to add one more voice to the conversation before you close that file, before you call it complete. What does God say about this? What has He already spoken over the situation, over the season, over that person, over that dream? And maybe most importantly, what has he already done in your own story that you might be forgetting to factor in right now?

18:32 Because here's the thing about Caleb, he didn't look at the giants and pretend they weren't there. He looked at them fully, honestly, completely, and said, We can do this. Not because the odds changed, not because the giants suddenly looked smaller, but because he knew who was standing with him in that moment. And God is still in the business of walking with people into the scary places. He was faithful to Caleb. He has been faithful in your story. And I want you to know and to believe that he is not done yet. So this week, when I'm just being real realistic, starts to rise up in you.

19:18 I want you to just pause for a second, take a breath, and add one more question before you let your thoughts settle there. I want you to just think, what does God say? Because his reality is always bigger than the one you can see from where you're standing. And his ways are higher than anything you can calculate on your own. Okay, before I let you go, I just want to say something to whoever needs to hear this today.

20:03 God is not intimidated by your giants. He is not caught off guard by your circumstances. And he has never once looked at your situation and said, I have to be realistic about this. He is the God who parts ease, who turns mourning into dancing, who calls things that are not as though they were, who has been faithfully, quietly, persistently at work in your story in ways you may not have even seen yet. The ten spies were not bad people.

20:44 They were honest people who forgot to factor in their God. And I think there is a lot of grace for that. Because it is a very human thing to do. But I also think we are capable of being a Caleb, of holding the hard thing honestly, and trusting the God who holds us. Of being people who see the giants clearly and still say, we can do this. Not because we are impressive, but because he is faithful. Next week, we're gonna keep taking a look at this series and going in this series with another phrase I think a lot of us have said more than we even realized.

21:34 That's the phrase, I'll believe it when I see it. We're gonna ask whether we are people of evidence or people of promise. And I think it is going to be a really good conversation. So I really, really hope you'll stay with us through this series and join us again next week. And until then, keep asking, keep listening, and keep expanding what. You believe God can do. Before you go, if today's question stayed with you, I'd love to keep the conversation going.

22:17 Each week I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you.com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.