Time to leave

The church I attend started seven years ago. We just celebrated our seventh anniversary last Sunday, in fact.

In those seven years, we went from a team of about twelve (and three kids) to about 130. We’ve been staying at the same place during that time, renting more and more rooms in the building in order to meet all the needs we have for the Sunday service.

But we’re reaching our breaking point now. We simply can’t fit very many more people into the building.

It’s a good problem to have. But it is a problem. And so we’re really feeling like God is readying us for another place.

That’s what I think of when I see this passage. God told the Israelites,

You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance…

See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the LORD swore he would give…” (Deuteronomy 1:6–8)

Obviously (from the deleted portions you’ll have to read for yourselves), God was talking to the Israelites, telling them to leave Mount Horeb where they’d been camping for some time and to move to the land he had promised to give to their ancestors and to them.

The Israelites learned a lot at Mount Horeb.

There, Moses met God for the first time. Then he received the Ten Commandments there and passed them on to the Israelites. They had all experienced God there.

But God was saying, “It’s time to move on. Get up. Go. I’ve prepared a place for you. Take possession of it.”

Considering how much the Israelites had groaned and complained about being in the desert, my guess is that they were happy to go.

Yet when the time came to go into the land God promised, they were stopped by their fear.

This despite the fact that God had made these promises to give the land, and despite his promise to them that he would be with them.

As a result, they were forced to wander around the desert until they all died off.

What does this all mean for us?

There may come a time in your life when God tells you it’s time to move on.

Certainly, our church seems to be at that point. I certainly reached that point when God told me to come to Japan. My pastor reached that point when God told him to leave his church and start a new one.

Yet it can be scary. It’s scary to take leaps of faith. But when God tells us it’s time to leave, what will we do? Will we take that leap? Or will we stay where we are?

I struggle with this. And I’m thinking even now about where the next step for me is.

I don’t know. All I know is that I need to be listening to God’s voice. And when he says it’s time to go, I need to go.

And so do we all.

How about you? Is it time for you to leave where you are in order to do God’s will?