God is Ready

On Mount Carmel, when the prophet of God challenges the prophets of Baal to a showdown of the gods, the prophet ends up taunting the false worshippers. "Oh, sorry. Maybe Baal is busy right now. Maybe he's somewhere far away doing something else and can't hear you. Maybe he's in the bathroom." Maybe, for whatever reason, your god simply isn't ready for this right now. 

That will never be the case for the Lord. 

Our God lives ready.

When you read the Bible, that's something you see over and over and over again. God shows up. God is there when His people need Him. He responds. He comes with flaming sword and strong armor and a stiff wind that blows through the whole battlefield. 

Remember when the young man was scared and the prophet prayed, "Oh, Lord, open his eyes and let him see what we both, You and I, see," and all of a sudden, the hills were teeming with flaming chariots and the whole army of the God of Israel? Remember when, in the Old Testament, the people continually called Him "the Lord of Armies"? 

You don't get to be called the Lord of Armies if you don't have flaming chariots on every hill and if you aren't ready to engage in battle in the moment when Your people need You. 

I'm not saying that God always acts in our timing or that we never have to wait on Him. The Bible is just as clear that sometimes, His people have to wait. Saul was weary of waiting and made an unauthorized sacrifice, which cost him the kingship. There are 400 years of silence between the end of the Old Testament and the coming of the actual Messiah. Lazarus laid dead in a tomb for days before Jesus showed up. It would be foolish for us to believe that just because our God is always ready, that it means that He's acting in our time. He has His own time. 

But ready, He remains. 

One of the more interesting examples of this comes from Job. When God responds to Job and addresses the man's (and his friends') understanding, one of the things He says is, "Do you know where the storehouses are where I keep My hail? It's on reserve for the time of great trouble, for the day of battle, the day of war. Do you know where I keep it?"

In other words, God's weapons are stocked. His supplies are ready. At any given moment, He can step in and unleash what He's prepared; He is always ready for that day. 

That doesn't mean He's eager for that day. That doesn't mean He wants that day to come. That doesn't mean that day comes on our time or that we will even know when it is. 

It simply means that when that day comes, when the fight is at hand, God is ready. 

In the blink of an eye, the storehouses will be open and the holy hail will rain down. Blink again, and we will see chariots of fire over all the mountains and valleys. Blink thrice, and we shall see the angels with their flaming swords slashing about. 

Our God is the Lord of Armies, and He is ready for that day.