“ The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Get ready, and go..” Deuteronomy 1:6-7
It should have been a day of celebration. Moses’ declaration should have kicked off a party. Put the fattened calf on the barbecue, slap some Sweet Baby Rays on that thing and starting dancing!
God had miraculously moved over a million people from 400 years of bondage to the side of mountain. God put all of Israel on an 11 day hike out of slavery across a desert to lush lands of his promise. Only problem was the journey had been detoured for 39 years, 354 days. And now, finally, they were staring down the promised promise.
It is the very next words that are in the passage that seems to keep hitting me in the face. “Get ready”.
My first question is after 40 years of waiting how are you not ready already?
But it is the second question that requires me to peer deeper into my own soul: “am I ready?”
There are delayed promises in all of our lives. Dreams, visions, healing, deliverance and blessings that are still unrealized. This is the side of the mountain a lot of us stand on. In truth, my tent has probably been there for far too long.
I’ve often lived in long stretches of wandering in eager expectation of the God’s fulfillment of a promise, but the reality check is in if I am ready to walk into that promise? I pray and pray and pray some more for what it in faith I have believed God for. Then God in his infinite whacked out timing says “Okay, get ready.”
Then panic sets in causing me to ask “God am I really ready?”
The season between the promise and promise realized is a period of preparation. Often God’s “get ready” is a reminder of what he has already had you walking through to get you to the side of the mountain.
Then he says next…
“and go…”
All the “get ready” leads to this simple command, it is time to leave the mountain. God has prepared you, readied you, walked you round and round the desert so that when ready you walk into the promise.
Hesitation and disbelief cost the children of Israel over 30 years of not living in the promise. They did not make the same mistake twice.
And neither should you or I. God’s go is the moment to leave. God’s go is the very instant of the realization the promise. Don’t miss the moment of the “go”. If you do it’s gone.
It’s time to leave the mountain.
