Biblical “wilderness” refers to the times in life when we are confronted
with trials and difficulties and challenges; when life gets complicated, and we
don’t know where to turn. When everything around us seems to be against us;
when life feels hopeless, harried, and disheartening — we are in a Biblical
“wilderness”. Wilderness is: being unemployed; not able to find a decent job.
Wilderness is: an illness, that doesn’t seem to get better. Wilderness is: a
relationship where the love seems to be gone, and you can’t seem to get the
joy, the respect, the tenderness back into the relationship. Biblical
wilderness is: a job that brings no joy or fulfillment, and no prospect of it
ever getting better. Wilderness is: stuck in a situation where with no choices.
Wilderness is: feeling sad or hopeless, and not knowing why, or what to do
about it. A Biblical wilderness is: feeling as if the weight of the world is on
your shoulders, and you have no way of getting out from under it.
After a person truly turns to Christ and receives the assurance of God’s
forgiveness for their past sins, there is usually a short period of joy and
blessing where everything seems so wonderful and new! During this period
answers to prayer come easily, and God seems to give lots of favor. This may be
compared to the joy that the Israelites had in leaving Egypt to head for the
Promised Land. The Egyptians gave them all the gold and silver they asked for,
they had been spared the judgments that came on those Egyptians such as the
death of the firstborn, and they were finally free from their slavery!
Hallelujah!
Yet experience and the Scriptures teach us that after this short period of
joy and blessing we will eventually enter a dry wilderness. This is not to say
that we will be dry spiritually. It is God’s will for us to be continually
filled with the Holy Spirit from day one (Ephesians 5:18), and God does not
withhold the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him. The Holy Spirit is the one who
encourages us in good times as well as tough times. We need Him. Yet it is possible
even to be full of the Holy Spirit, and go through a wilderness experience in
which there is almost nothing in your circumstances to encourage you. You may
be just surviving from day to day financially or materially. You may be waiting
for your healing to manifest. It is all totally unpleasant for your flesh.
Instead of prosperity there will be trials and pressure. Your peace will be
assaulted by all kinds of negative emotions and thoughts, which you will need
to resist. It’s a test, but God has promised that you will never be tempted
beyond your ability to endure, with each temptation He will also make a way of
escape, that you may be able to bear it.
During your wilderness experience, the familiar comforts of the world will
not be there for you. You have to learn to depend on God for all your need
materially, emotionally, physically as well as spiritually. The temptation will
be to backslide in your heart and return to find your life in the world system,
thereby rejecting Christ. Many do this in their hearts well before they forsake
church fellowship and get involved again in open, wilful sin. God warns us
against having an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. If
indeed we do believe God, we know He will come through for us if we keep thanking
Him. We trust that the wilderness time is only temporary, however tough it may
seem.
Our Lord Jesus Christ also went through a wilderness experience, and He
showed us how to pass through it successfully. After his baptism, and His
anointing with the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures say He was “led by the Spirit
into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those
days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry” (Luke
4:1,2).
There was nothing in that wilderness naturally speaking to comfort the
Lord. Jesus Himself had to pass through the wilderness experience before He
could be used by God to bring salvation, healing and deliverance to anyone. In
verse 14, just after this time in the wilderness, it says, “Jesus returned in
the power of the Holy Spirit to Galilee.” Jesus is our model in these things.
If we want the power of the Holy Spirit, not just the fullness, we have to pass
the tests in the wilderness. Jesus did it by speaking the Word of God and ignoring
the cravings of his body for food for a period of time. The same methods will
work for any one of us. Christ now lives in us to make this approach a
possibility for us.
The Lord is the strength of our life! (Isaiah 12:2; Psalm
27:1)
Anyone who has gotten anywhere in God has gone through at least one
wilderness experience. The Israelites leaving Egypt were no exception. It is
normal to go through more than one such experience in your life. Wildernesses
can be seasons aside with God to learn from God where there is no option to be
very productive outwardly. There is almost always a period of waiting between
the time you receive a promise of God in your heart, and the time of its
fulfillment. Do not be surprised when this happens! There are many examples in
the Bible to show us that this is the way God deals with His people.
So take
heart – if this is happening to you right now, it shows you are on track with
God. He hasn’t given up on you. He is forming you to be the kind of person who
can overcome giants through faith in God, and enjoy blessings far greater than
you could otherwise ever know in the world. But before you get there, you will
be tested, often severely. See each trial as an opportunity to be promoted to
better things in God. Its more painful to fail God’s tests than it is to pass
them. If you fail, He will lovingly bring you round again to face exactly the
same test again and again until you learn to pass.
Those who meditate on the Word are preparing themselves for God’s
blessings. Those who tolerate sin are preparing themselves for painful dealings
and possible disaster. Everything will go through God’s fire, but the results
of the fire depend on the type of heart we have.
When you think about it, God owes us nothing. If we have anything good, we
should give thanks to God. Even if all our bodily desires are not satisfied, we
should thank God for what we have. The goal of life is not to pander to bodily
desires. The goal of life is to be like God, like Jesus, and do things that
please Him out of love because He first loved us. God talks about us being
predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. Many years I decided to
accept this plan rather than continually fighting it. The world needs more
people like Jesus. It certainly does not need more people full of selfish
ambition as I was before I turned to the Lord.
So make it your aim to please the Lord, even when you are sorely tempted to
grumble and complain about things, and God will see your faith and patience and
move you onto better things. The wilderness is only meant to be for a season,
to make you a better person. But if you do grumble and complain, be prepared to
take another lap around Mount Sinai. Be prepared to spend years in the
wilderness. It’s sad, but there are so many Christians who never come into a
mature attitude of faith, trust and thanksgiving so that God can manifest in
their lives so many of the outstanding promises found in His Word for those who
believe.
One of the first things God did with the Israelites after their baptism in
the Red Sea and the cloud (which symbolize baptism in water and the Holy
Spirit), was to teach them the law and have a tabernacle set up for divine
worship. If you don’t learn to thank, praise, worship and honor God in the
wilderness, God knows you are not ready for prosperity, abundance and blessing.
We should learn right attitudes so that God will be pleased to lift us up and
empower us at the right time (when we can be trusted).
No Manna Stores
Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for
you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this
way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions."
(Exodus 16:4)
When God took the nation of Israel through the desert, there was one thing
the people simply could not do outside of God alone: They could not provide for
themselves. They could not plant. They could not harvest. They could not
manufacture. It was a place and time where nothing but complete dependence was
the rule. God gave manna one day at a time. The manna spoiled the day after, so
they could never store it. They could not go to the manna store to get more.
They couldn't start a manna business to capitalize on all the free manna. I can
tell you from personal experience that when God takes you to the desert, there
is nothing you can do to change it until He wants to change it, so do not
strive against God in the desert place.
What was the purpose of this restrictive time in their lives? Why did God
have to keep them from using any of these abilities to earn on their own? It
was a season to build trust and reliance on God. They had relied on the
"manna" of Egypt for so long that He needed to change their whole
nature of looking to Egypt as their provider to looking to God as their
provider. This boot camp was to be only for a season. However, what should have
been less than a 30-day journey took 40 years because of the hardness of their
hearts. They never passed the test God gave them.
The Purpose of the Desert
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the
desert and speak tenderly to her" (Hosea 2:14).
If you have an important message to convey to someone, what is the best
means of getting the message through? Have you ever tried to talk with someone
who was so busy you could not get them to hear you? Distractions prevent us
from giving our undivided attention to the messenger. So too, God has His way
of taking us aside to get our undivided attention. For Paul, it was Arabia for
three years, for Moses, it was forty years in the desert, for Joseph, it was
thirteen years in Egypt, for David, it was many years of fleeing from King
Saul.
God knows the stubborn human heart. He knows that if He is to accomplish His
deepest work, He must take us into the desert in order to give us the privilege
to be used in His kingdom. It is the desert where we are changed. He removes
those things that hinder. He forces us to draw deep upon His grace. The desert
is only a season in our life. When He has accomplished what He wants in our
lives in the desert, He will bring us out. He has given you and I a mission to
fulfill that can only be fulfilled after we have spent adequate time in
preparation in the desert.
Fear not the desert. For it is there you will hear
the voice of God like never before. It is here you become His bridegroom. It is
here you will have the idols of your life removed. It is here you begin to
experience the reality of a living God like never before. Someone once said,
"God uses enlarged trials to produce enlarged saints so He can put them in
enlarged places!"
Desert Preparation
The apostle Paul tells us in the first chapter of Galatians some of the
facts surrounding his own conversion. He tells us that he clearly understood
the call Jesus placed on his life. He did not have to consult other men about
this calling. But before he was released to begin his own mission, He went to
Arabia for three years. Why did Paul have to go to Arabia for three years
before he ever met another disciple of Jesus Christ?
The Scripture does not tell us plainly why Paul spent three years in
Arabia. However, based upon many examples of God placing special calls on
people's lives, we know it often requires a time of separation between the old
life and the new life. No doubt, Paul had plenty of time to consider what had
taken place in his life and time to develop an intimate knowledge and
relationship with the newfound Savior. His life was about to change
dramatically.
So often, when God places a call on one of His children, it requires a
separation between the old life and the new life. There is a time of being away
from the old in order to prepare the heart for what is coming. It can be a
painful and difficult separation. Joseph was separated from his family. Jacob
was sent to live with his uncle Laban. Moses was sent to the desert.
Has God taken you into the desert? Is He forcing you to depend wholly on
His provision? Pray that you will learn the lessons God desires you to learn in
the desert place. He will bring you out when He has accomplished all He wants
to build in your life. Remember that it is a season; you will not be there
forever. He understands that no one can stay in a desolate place forever.
It’s a law of life that anything worthwhile requires some patience and
endurance.
Perhaps God has placed you in your own desert period. Perhaps you cannot
make sense of the situation in which you find yourself. If you press into God
during this time, He will reveal the purposes He has for you. The key is
pressing into Him. Seek Him with a whole heart and He will be found. God may
have a special calling and message He is building in your life right now. Trust
in His love for you, that He will fully complete the work He has started in you.
Wilderness experiences are God's way of disciplining and pruning those He
loves, building faith, breaking down our reliance on our feelings and our
emotions, and crucifying the self or flesh. They are worthwhile experiences.
And if we intend to be radical disciples, we must go through the wilderness
that God has allowed to come our way. Our wilderness experience had our name on
it long before we were even born. Ultimately, we need to grow up and react to
wilderness experiences as mature Christians. When we find ourselves in those
situations, we must turn to the Lord and determine to worship even more than
usual.
Determine in your heart, that you will not wilt under the hot son of
spiritual aridity, but rather you will trust in the Lord even more than the
usual because you know the dryness is temporary and that God has a reason for
it. Allow Him to do the work in you. You will come out of it a better servant, with
greater understanding and with fewer distractions.
What is this all about? Well, It's
about...
God conforming us to the likeness of Jesus (Romans 8:29)
Wilderness experiences are all about persevering. You must go all the way through the experience. Don’t give up! Trust God. He is faithful. Ultimately God wants us to go through those experiences in Victory. It can happen if we allow God to be God and if we recognize what is happening and why? We must know that God is in complete control of our situation. He has His reasons.
Jesus knows what you’re going through, too. And He wants your faith to not fail, also. Soon, your wilderness experience will be over. Why? It is because you passed the test. You learned what God wanted you to learn. You now have a greater understanding of who God is, how He works, what His word says and how you must rely on it, not your feelings and emotions. That’s a lot of learning packed into one experience.
God is good. He doesn’t need our help, but He does want our worship. He
doesn't want our whining, but He does want our obedience. He turns His back on
our pity parties but He reaches out for our faith. He is disappointed in our
giving up, but He rejoices in our perseverance. Everything that God does is
good. And God does,---" Wilderness Experiences."
When God began a deeper work in my own life, it required a separation from
all I had known before. He removed all that I had placed confidence in, up to
that point. It was very painful and very scary. In my mind, it was not the time
to start life over. God had a different idea. He removed all my comforts and
security in order to accomplish a much greater work than what I could see at
the time. The picture is clear now. I understand why it was necessary, but I
didn't at the time.
So don’t give up in the midst of trials. It is necessary that you pass
through seasons of trials, but God is there for you to strengthen you and hold
you up.
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