Trail Life Sunday: Faith On The Rugged Trail Series

Trail Life Sunday: Faith on the Rugged Trail

September 14, 2025

Dr. Bradford Reaves

Crossway Christian Fellowship

Colossians 1:10; Numbers 13:25-33; Matthew 7:13; Joshua 4:6-7

Introduction: The Trailhead

Church, today we lace up our boots for a different kind of trail. This is Trail Life Sunday, a day where we celebrate our Trail Life boys and American Heritage Girls, but also where we as the church remember that the Christian life itself is a rugged trail. Trail Life’s motto is simple but weighty: “Walk Worthy.” And that comes straight out of Scripture. The apostle Paul writes in Colossians 1:10 “so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

That’s not a suggestion. That’s a charge. Walking worthy means walking different — not like the crowd, but like Christ. And today, I want to take you back to a story in the Old Testament that is as rugged, adventurous, and faith-forging as any trail you’ve ever hiked. It’s the story of Joshua and Caleb — two men who stood in faith when everyone else wanted to quit. Two men who saw giants and said, “Let’s go.”

Backpack Weights (Giants vs. God)

Visual: A big trail backpack filled with heavy rocks (labeled with fears: “Giants,” “Peer Pressure,” “Sin,” “Doubt”). A smaller stone labeled “God’s Promise.”

Lesson: The ten spies saw the heavy weight and said, “We can’t carry this.” Joshua and Caleb looked at the same load and said, “God’s promises outweigh the giants.”

Application: Walking worthy means trusting God to carry the weight. “Cast your burden on the LORD, and He will sustain you” (Ps. 55:22).

At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. 26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” 30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” 31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

The Crowd vs. the Courageous

Picture this: The twelve spies return from scouting the land of Canaan. They’ve seen the mountains, the valleys, the grapes so big they had to carry them on poles. The land was everything God promised — fertile, abundant, rich. But ten spies step forward with trembling voices: “Yes, the land is good. But the people are giants. The cities are fortified. We can’t do this.”

Do you see what happened? Fear eclipsed faith. The crowd believed the majority report. But two men — Joshua and Caleb — saw the same giants, the same walls, and yet came to a very different conclusion: “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it” (Num. 13:30).

Here’s the Trail Life principle: The easy path is almost always crowded. The narrow path is often lonely. Boys become men not by going with the majority, but by standing with conviction.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.” (Matthew 7:13)

Grapes of Canaan (Faith vs. Fear)

Visual: A huge cluster of grapes (or substitute with oversized fruit basket).

Lesson: The spies all saw the same fruit. But ten saw obstacles; two saw opportunity.

Application: What do you see in the world today? Only giants, or the God who made the promise?