Endeavor To Get

"What God gives we must endeavour to get." (Matthew Henry)

“Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land: begin to possess it, and contend with him in battle. This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.” (Deuteronomy 2:24-25)

God tells His people to, “Rise ye up”. Notice what God says next. He does not say go fight, God first says go and, “begin to possess it”. To possess is vastly different than to fight. No, it isn’t a matter of semantics. To possess connotes ownership. To fight, well, anyone, anywhere can fight for any reason.

God’s purpose for His people isn’t to fight. God tells His people to get up and possess because the land is theirs. He gave it to them. Now, is this not the same scenario played out in the Bible time and time again? God tells His people to get up and go get what I have already given to you. Just take passion of it. God told that to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to Joshua, to Gideon, to Jeremiah, to Jesus, to Paul, and God told that to you too! God has told you to “Rise ye up, take your journey”, and “begin to possess it”. Except God didn’t give you, “Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land”. God has given you His only begotten Son Jesus Christ and the Promised Land, the Kingdom of God. But you have to rise up and begin to possess it! And yes, you too will have to contend with him in battle.

The “him” is none other than the devil himself. The devil defeats most people before they ever rise-up. Some he defeats because they stood up, and yet others he takes out on the field of battle. (Think of the parable of the sower.)

Here is a great example of the devil defeating an entire race of people before they ever rose up to possess what God had given them.

God told Moses to go take possession of the land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey. So, Moses sent an advance team to scope the land out. When the team returned, they told Moses, “We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.” (Deut.13:27). The fruit was a single cluster of grapes that took two men to carry.

But they also saw a well-fortified city and giants, which in comparison, made themselves look like grasshoppers. So, the people ignore God’s command, dismissed the land and its benefits, and then cried, wept, and murmured against Moses. The people were so distraught with the land of Canaan that God had given them that they wished they, “had died in the land of Egypt! or would God we had died in this wilderness!” (Numbers 14:2)

God was furious with the people for they had disobeyed His command and rebelled. He was so furious that God was about to kill them all and start over again.

“I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they.” (Numbers 14:12).

Moses stepped in and pleaded with God for a pardon, “according unto the greatness of thy mercy”. God heeded Moses’s plea.

All the people had to do was, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

It must be understood that what God says, is His will. What God says, will happen.

“So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

Here’s another example. David had just defeated the Philistines. Now they are reorganizing and regrouping to launch a counter-attack on him. David is ready and eager to completely decimate the Philistines. But before he does, he goes to the Lord for guidance, like he did before his initial attack.

God tells David, “Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.” (2 Samuel 5:23-24)

In both of the examples above, God gave ownership of the situation for the people to possess. But in the first example, the people rebelled against God’s word due to fear and mistrust. And if it hadn’t been for Moses, they all would have paid for it with their lives.

In the second example David trusted God and did exactly what God told him to do. Even though David had already defeated the Philistines just a short while prior, He still leaned not unto his own understanding. David acknowledged God in all that he did and God directed David’s path back to another victory over the Philistines.

What God gives we must endeavor to get. He will almost always work in tandem with us, but never doing for us. God almost always creates the situation where He gives us ownership, but we still have to take possession. There will be struggles and challenges in so doing. This is where trust and reliance on God is critical and essential.

Bill Hitchcock