Currently listening:

!http://radiate.aplacetoconnect.com/scottphillips_tn.jpg!:http://www.scott-phillips.com/

“Scott Phillips with Chris Hennig – ??Love And The Like??”:http://www.scott-phillips.com/ – My friend Chris played piano on this album. I could listen to it all day… quality songs in a laid-back living-room session style.

Something I came across today:

bq. Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.” Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.
(Joshua 14:6-14, ESV)

The people have victoriously driven out _most_ of the tribes living in the land, just as God told them to. There are only a few left, including some of those who were most feared from the beginning — when ten of the twelve spies returned full of despair and bearing news of “giants” who could squash them like bugs, they were talking about the Anakim (Numbers 13:33). Only Caleb and Joshua believed that God would give them victory. Now, forty-five years later, having walked with God his entire life, Caleb asks Joshua to give him the hill country where the giants live. Everyone else is feeling safe and smug, ready to receive their land and settle down. When I first started reading, I thought Caleb was requesting the same thing: “It’s my eighty-fifth birthday and I’ve been the man, so give me what I’ve got coming to me, and I’m gonna live it up.” But then he states his reason, and it’s the exact opposite: He wants that land so he can try to drive out the giants. Caleb knew the people hadn’t completely obeyed God’s command. The work wasn’t done and he wasn’t dead, so he wasn’t about to quit.

That made my day. I hope I’m that passionate for God’s glory when I’m eighty-five. I want to be like that now.