Being Like Eeyore Could Mess Up Your Future Big Time

When things don’t go as planned, if we’re not conscious of our focus we could easily respond like Eeyore and end up overwhelmed by gloom and doom.

"The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would." — “The sky has finally fallen. Always knew it would.”

Almost 4,000 years before A.A. Milne brought the character of Eeyore into the world of Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore’s spirit was alive in the Children of Israel. It showed up big time in the report ten of the twelve spies brought back after they snuck in and checked out the Promised Land.

In your mind, hear their words in Eeyore’s slow, sad drawl – “You’re right, Moses. The Promised Land is a land of milk and honey. The strawberries are really good. But we can’t go in. There are giants there. If we try to take their land, we’ll die. We should just turn around and go back to Egypt.”

We Can’t

There it is – doom and gloom. We’re not big enough or strong enough to defeat the giants. We can’t get the job done. We’re destined to fail. It will never work. We can’t do it.

Actually, they did get one thing right. It was true that they were no match for the giants they’d face. In their own strength they would lose.

God Can

But they forgot they had God on their team. He not only planned to go with them, He would be leading them. And that meant one thing – victory. But God told them that victory would only happen if they:

Were strong and courageous
Did not give in to fear
Obeyed HIs commands
Did not give in to dismay

Do God’s battle stipulations sound unreasonable to you? Was He asking too much? No. He was simply calling them to follow and trust and believe that He would give them success.

Caleb and Joshua (the other two spies) believed God would do what He promised. That’s why they pleaded with their fellow Israelites to see things from God’s perspective, not their own human perspective.

“God’s got this. He can do what we can’t do!”

If the Children of Israel had taken the words of Joshua and Caleb to heart, things would have turned out very different. They would have walked into a great future in a new homeland of their own rather than walking aimlessly in the desert until they died.

Talk about a wasted life; a huge missed opportunity. They were “that close” to experiencing God’s preferred future for their lives – new homes and a new life in a new land. But because they were filled with fear and dismay, their response was way too much like Eeyore’s. Their “we can’t do this” attitude caused them to lose it all.

It doesn’t have to end that way for us. Better yet, it doesn’t have to be that way for us today.

Are you facing some giants in your life right now? Are you up against a wall that seems impossible to get past? Are you filled with fear and dismay?

Instead of focusing on the problem, consciously focus on God: His love; His power; His ways. Make the commitment to follow God’s leading, no matter what. Then make these five words your battle cry:

“I can’t but God can.”

by Dave Gudgel