Why are you acting like a grasshopper???

Every way you turn you encounter it. It's everywhere. What is "it" you ask? It's words. The Bible says that our words have the power to bring life or death. With all of these words flying around, some are bound to stick with us. The first time someone tells us they love us. A moving speech we heard at some point. Also negative comments that people say. Whether it intends to hurt us or not. To be honest this is one of my biggest problems. I focus on the bad things that people have said about me and I let it get me down. People are going to talk. Words are a part of our life. The trouble lies in how we react to it. As I was thinking about all of that tonight, God brought to my memory two stories from the Bible. In both stories we see that our main character has been, if you will, beaten by someone's words. The first story I want to look at is in Numbers 13. The Israelites, after being verbally and physically abused for years, finally escape Egypt into the land God had promised them. In this passage, we find them sending a group of people in to see what lay ahead of them in this new land. All accounts of the land said that it was wonderful and had everything they had been promised. The only problem was the people living there. They were said to be huge. So ten of these twelve men decided that to buy into the lies that they had been told. Lies that said they were weak and easily over powered. No one in that country had to even lift a weapon against them they had all accepted defeat in their heart. "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." (verse 13:33) I can't speak for everyone but I know I, myself, have fallen into a grasshopper mind set. I let the words of others determine my fate. I lay down and say yea your right I'm just a grasshopper or something else that is easily broken. But this, my friends, doesn't have to be. There is another way. Our next story takes place in the book of John chapter 12. Jesus and all of his followers are in a house for a feast. It is only a couple days away from when He will be put to death. Mary one of Jesus' followers is compelled to take a very expensive bottle of  perfume and wash Jesus' feet and she also uses her hair to dry the extra perfume. People are outraged by this. This was worth a years wages!!! It may have been all she had left too, we don't really know. This woman could have faced many trails many words of hurt and disappointment before she did this. We can clearly see that she faced it after. But she did not care. She had a to express her love for Jesus to find some way to think her savior. At that point, all of the words of the years held no weight. None of it mattered. She let go and did what she felt in her heart to be right. My hope is that one day we can all reach this point. To know that nothing matters. To know that if we truly care about something we should persue it, no matter what people may say. We can live like grasshoppers hiding in the dessert, longing for our rightful home. Or we can let go and move into victory. For me I'm tired of living like a grasshopper. I want what was promised to me. I have to believe that if it was promised to me that God will make a way for me to get it. There may even be more gaints to face, but that doesn't mean that I have to view myself as the grasshopper. Mary was a nobody, and we don't even know her whole story. But, we do know that she stepped out even when others told her she couldn't or shouldn't and she did something amazing!!!!!!! If we choose to be grasshoppers we will never reach our goals or potential. It's time to stop thinking like a grasshopper and start acting and moving with purpose.