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God, Desires and Forty Years of Waiting
By Julie | March 10, 2008
Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. – Psalm 37:4
The forty years had passed. It was time for Israel to claim their land, the land they desired in their hearts. God wanted to give it to them. But, he didn’t want them to turn away and run in fear as they had before. He also knew the current inhabitants of the land weren’t going to hand it over just because they saw a large group of people coming to claim it. The people living there were evil in God’s eyes, and God doesn’t see you as evil until you do very horrible things, repeatedly. In fact, when God decided to wipe out Sodom and Gomorrah he promised he would not if there was even one good man. So, Lot and his family were allowed to leave before it was destroyed beyond all recognition. So God would not have handed this land over to the Israelites if good people were already living there.
When the time came for the Israelites to face battles over the land God promised them, he gave them small tests that lead to victories first. God led his people through other nations. He gave the instructions not to fight, and told them the land they were on was promised to the descendants of Esau and Lot. That means it was off limits, because God loved Esau and Lot.
You are to pay them in silver for the food you eat and the water you drink. The Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He has watched over your journey through the vast desert. These forty years the Lord has been with you, and you have lacked nothing. – Deuteronomy 2:6-7
But they walked through these lands; they paid for their food and were civilized. The people in these nations saw them, and their size, and were quite intimidated. God led them through these two lands to get them comfortable among people they feared, and to show them he would protect them.
Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, King of Heshbon and his country. This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. – Deuteronomy 2-24-25
And boy did God ever deliver them! They took their towns, left no survivors and kept the plunder and livestock. God led them to another victory in the defeat of Og King of Bashan; they destroyed every city.
Yet, it was the fear of war forty years earlier that stopped them, and made them wail in despair, crying that God had led them out of Egypt to kill them! (Even though he gave them manna and quail to eat.) Then, the Israelites complained God had led them to be destroyed by people who were larger and stronger then they were. They had not even gone to battle, but already considered themselves lost and dead. So, this time, God gave them tests, obstacles and victories to prepare them for his real goal: giving them the desires of their hearts in the holy land, and land flowing with milk and honey.
Sometimes we can want something so badly we lose our patience. We don’t want to wait. When we have to, we feel God has kept something from us, or that he’ll never give us what we desperately wish for. But God is not a Genie. He knows what we would do with our gifts and desires if he gives them to us too soon. Sometimes he is not withholding what we desire, but he is putting us through a preparation period, to make us who we need to be to get what we really want. In the meantime, we have the promise that he’ll bless us by providing what we really need. And if we don’t learn the lesson? Well, it’s not going to go away, the Israelites were delayed forty years for failing theirs.
Topics: Encouragement, Faith | No Comments »
