Next time you feel like your prayers are wasted, remember that this is what God said to Moses.
In Numbers 14, Moses had sent spies, twelve men, to search the land God promised to give Israel. They wanted a little intel before they started invading all willy-nilly. There’s a whole children’s song that talks about this event:
Twelve men went to spy in Canaan
Ten were bad and two were good
What do you think they saw in Canaan?
Ten were bad and two were good
Some saw giants big and tall
Some saw grapes in clusters fall
Some saw God was in it all
Ten were bad and two were good
(Raise your hand if you sang it.)
When the spies came back, two men, Joshua and Caleb, brought a good report. They said it was a land flowing with milk and honey, an exceeding good land, and that God would give it to them, just as he’d said. They only needed to trust him. They were the gung-ho visionaries in the group.
But the other ten brought back scary stories about giants in the land and how Israel would never be able to conquer them. They said the giants were way strong and that the Israelites were like grasshoppers compared to them. No way, no how. Ten Negative Nans.
The people heard both reports and immediately believed the bad one. And the whining commenced. Why did God even bring us out here? Is he just trying to kill us? (*sniff*) Let’s pick a new captain and have him take us back to Egypt, back to slavery. At least we had garlic and leeks there. All we have out here is manna and quails.
And God had enough.
Did you know God has limits? My friend Shaun once said, “God is longsuffering, but he’s not forever suffering,” and that is just the truth.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them …”
Disinherit them. They won’t be my children anymore. They’ll get nothing from me. Let them be on their own, do what they want, make their own beds and lie in them. Go ahead and go back to Egypt. Let me know how that works out for you.
They were standing right on the edge of a forever mistake with God.
Then God had the idea to make a greater and mightier nation out of Moses, and he could totally have done it!
But Moses (being the enneagram 9 that I think he was) didn’t want that responsibility. Anything but that. He immediately began pleading for God to have mercy on Israel. He appealed to God from the “what will the Egyptians think of you if you bring your people all the way out here and them let them die” angle. He reminded the Lord of his great mercy and longsuffering-ness. He asked him to forgive Israel as he had from the moment he brought them out of Egypt until now. And the most incredible thing happened.
And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word. (Numbers 14:20)
Amazingly, God would pardon Israel one more time. Certainly there would be consequences: the generation that God brought out of Egypt, who saw his glory and his miracles and still didn’t believe, the ones who (as God reminded Moses) rebelled against him ten times, that generation would not see the Promised Land.
Caleb and Joshua would, but not the rest of those sniveling, rebellious whiners. God would start over with Israel’s “little ones” and keep his promises to the nation. But the adults, the ones who saw God’s miracles and mercy toward them and still rebelled, they weren’t getting in.
But look at what God said to Moses: “I have pardoned according to thy word.”
God changed his mind about destroying the whole nation. He said he was going to do one thing, and he changed his mind and did another thing. And he did this because Moses asked. He simply prayed.
Moses was just a man. A frail, meek, fallen man, but he asked God to do something and his asking changed God’s mind.
Don’t miss that.
We have the ability to change God’s mind when we pray, just like Moses did.
I know, it’s so easy to feel like our situation is different today than back then. We don’t actually talk face-to-face with God nowadays. (But we could.) We don’t see him do amazing things. (Maybe because we’re not looking.)
We justify our lack of faith by saying, “Well, that was when he was bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt. He had to be more involved in their lives. He’s not like that with us now.” (Are his children less important today than they were 4,000 years ago?)
Here’s what God says about himself:
For I am the LORD, I change not. (Malachi 3:6)
He is the same God today as the one who spoke with, and listened to, Moses. The same God who Moses begged on behalf of Israel and God’s mind was changed. Same God.
So ask. Beg. Cry and lament. Tell him what you want. Don’t mince words and don’t be afraid to reason with God—he’s a big guy and he can handle it.
But know this: God listens. He hears and he considers what you say. And it is possible to change his mind.
It's impossible for an omniscient Being to change their mind. Since He already knows the future and how He will react, something else is at play in this account.