When Eleven Days Turns into Forty Years

One Year Bible
Old Testament passage for Saturday, March 23, 2013:  Numbers 36:1-Deuteronomy 1:46

"It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea.  Now it came to pass in the fortieth year in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given as commandments to them."  Dt. 1:2-3 (NKJV)

The distance from Mt. Sinai (also called Mt. Horeb) to the edge of the Promised Land was only an 11 days' journey.  Yet, it took the children of Israel 40 years of wandering around in the wilderness before they finally arrived again at the borders of Canaan. 

The Christian life is far more than "OUT OF."  It is also "INTO."  It took relatively little time for the children of Israel to come OUT OF Egypt.  It took 40 years for them to get ready to go INTO the Promised Land.  They could have completed the journey in under two weeks.  Instead it took a lifetime.

I can identify with Israel.  It was not hard for God to get Israel OUT OF Egypt.  It took 40 years to get Egypt OUT OF Israel.  This is the process we are now undergoing.  We have experienced a "relocation."  We have gotten a new citizenship -- a new identity.  Yet we still tend to go back to the old ways.  We tend to revert to our old citizenship. 

Our God is FAITHFUL!  He has determined to bless us.  He will not relent.  It can take you 11 days or 40 years.  Regardless, you will ultimately come into fullness.  God has brought you OUT, in order that He might bring you IN.  He will complete what He has begun.