Deuteronomy 7:17 · World English Bible
Deuteronomy 7:17 Meaning If You Shall Say in Your Heart
If you shall say in your heart, “These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?”
What does Deuteronomy 7:17 mean?
The question you ask in private sets the answer, and the answer decides what you will never attempt. Ask the mind why something cannot be done and it works hard and delivers, because it answers whatever grammar it is handed.
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Deuteronomy 7:17 through 1 lens
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The question you ask in private sets the answer, and the answer decides what you will never attempt.
Ask the mind why something cannot be done and it works hard and delivers, because it answers whatever grammar it is handed. Private arithmetic asks for reasons rather than routes, and the reasons arrive wearing the feel of certainty, which sets the state, and a drained state does not cross a border.
A limit accepted in the heart gets treated as a limit in the land, and it passes for realism because nobody argued with it. The counting is honest and the conclusion is not, because it omits what Yahweh already did in Egypt, the references strong enough to break it. Leave the question standing and life stays the size of whatever was feared the day it was asked.
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Live Deuteronomy 7:17 today
- Catch the sentence you say to yourself in the car or the shower, the one that starts with why I cannot, and swap it for what would the first step be. Your mind answers whatever you hand it, so hand it a better question.
- When someone tells you their situation is impossible, resist agreeing with them to be kind, and ask what they have already survived that was bigger. People need their own record read back to them.
- Under a deadline that looks too big, write the next single action on a sticky note and do only that. The fear was never counting wrong, it was counting instead of moving.
What have you quietly decided you will never attempt, and when did you last check that it was true?
The same truth in other traditions
Taoism · Tao Te Ching 64
The thousand mile journey is taken by the foot that moves, not by the mind that measures the distance. Measuring alone produces only the weight of the distance.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
The harm is rarely in the thing itself, it is in the judgment you fastened to it. Drop the judgment and the thing can be approached.
Buddhism · Majjhima Nikaya
Whatever a person turns over again and again becomes the inclination of the mind. Keep asking why you are stuck and the mind keeps building the cage.
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