Getting Out of Your Wilderness into God's Promise Land (Replacing a Doubting Attitude). I began a series of messages last week about what.
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We tend to shake our heads and think, "What was their problem? How could they miss it? The Israelites' slavery in Egypt is the equivalent of our slavery to sin. God sent Moses to deliver them from bondage, and He sent Jesus Christ to set us free. And just as the Israelites had to take a journey to possess their Promised Land, we have to take a journey to possess the promises of God for our lives.
Now the Israelites thought their enemies-such as the Canaanites and Amorites-were the problem that was keeping them from the Promised Land. However, it was actually their thinking that kept them in the wilderness for so long, because God was on their side.
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And if God is for you, who can be against you? Well, we have our own brand of "ites": But the truth is, God is on our side, and our problem is really in our thinking. See, it's impossible to be happy and think sadness and depression. It's impossible to be free from the bondage of sin if you think you are still in bondage to sin.
For example, thinking things like, "I'll never get over what happened to me," "I can't forgive them," and "I can't overcome that; it's too hard! The good news is, if we will learn to think the way God thinks, we can possess the freedom to have and enjoy life in Christ. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, your sins are forgiven and you become a new creature in Christ see 2 Corinthians 5: You are born again!
There's a part of you-the born-again part, your spirit-that's dead to sin. That's why it bothers you now when you sin. The "wilderness" part of you-your soul-is your unrenewed mind, out-of-control emotions, and stubborn will. It is in the desert that we ask God to guide us to the answers of the questions that are in our hearts… and as we search and find answers, something begins to happen in our spirit… and God begins to feed us on the meat of His Word … and the more time we spend studying His Word the more we want to know Him… and the more we grow to know Him, the more our soul is nourished, and the more our inner man is strengthened… and as His Word sinks deep into the driest places of our souls, we experience the grace to traverse the wilderness in which we find ourselves.
It is in a spiritual wilderness where God seems to vanish, and our faith begins to feel so meaningless and insignificant. It is a scary, debilitating feeling when your life and your faith seem to have all been in vain. Being out there in the wilderness feeling alone, vulnerable, scared, betrayed by God, despairing , life seems so chaotic and disconnected. They tell us that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
A wilderness in the Hebrew Scriptures is a barren, arid and dry place, a void, and a place where no life grows or thrives — it is a place cut off from life; a place inhabited by monsters and demonic forces; a scary place; a place of chaos; a place of wandering and restlessness. This was the place where the newly baptized Jesus was violently forced to dwell, and where he would encounter Satan himself. It was there in the desert that Jesus suffered from hunger, thirst, and loneliness… it was there that He was tempted to desperation, and to give up on God altogether.
No doubt, many of you have gone through several wildernesses — perhaps a life-threatening or serious illness, the death of a loved one, separation from a partner, the suffering of a child, the death of a dream, failure, addiction, bankruptcy, loss of reputation, rejection of a friend, and on and on. Though the wilderness is a place of darkness and despair, it should be understood that it is also a place where God is.
When the Israelites left Egypt where they were enslaved and entered the wilderness — God accompanied them for all forty years! So they were also tempted to abandon Him! Their faith in God was being severely tested. But that was not the case — so the wilderness was a complete shock to them! Essentially it caused the Israelites to cry out: He is not at all what we expected! We want a god that we can predict!
How To Get Out Of The Wilderness
In that precarious placed called the wilderness, the children of Israel learned to trust God, and to believe profoundly in His goodness and mercy despite the wilderness. Thus, they had to learn to trust that God is still good … that God is for them and not against them even amidst the unpredictability of life.
Though God seemed unpredictable to them, they ultimately learned that He was predictably good. So the wilderness is a place of exile from a predictable kind of a God; we are forced to give up on that kind of a God. The wilderness forces us to let go of our control, and in the dark night of faith, we let God lead us in the journey to the Promised Land even if we get their circuitously by the way of the desert. The experience of the wilderness opens us up to a deeper and more profound faith in God and in His goodness even as we wander through the lonely desert.
The wilderness is not the end of the story , because the Scripture says that God always brings His people out of the wilderness… just as the Israelites and Jesus Himself emerged from their wandering in the desert. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the wilderness is the place where salvation dawns… the place that gives way to a land rich in water and life… the place that ceases to be a place of exile and alienation. Ultimately, it is the cross that sustains us in the wilderness… that continues to give us faith and hope… because when we gaze upon it, we see not only death and abandonment, but that the Lord Jesus who endured the cross was not allowed to remain there… that He who felt abandoned by His Father was vindicated.
And so like Jesus, we will not be abandoned, that we may also see the Land of the living. The Wilderness Experience of the Believer. The spiritual wilderness feels differently for different people — for some, it is a place of intense and devastating loss; for others it is associated with feelings of emptiness, weariness and listlessness. The experience can last for days or for years. For many believers the wilderness forces a change of faith, and a re-framing and re-defining of what Christianity really means to them… some emerge out of the desert with their faith in tact, but with a renewed sense of energy… others stay in the church, but remain in some kind of low-grade wilderness for the rest of their lives, believing that a deep nourishing faith is either a false expectation or simply beyond their reach.
Another thing to know is that God is in the desert with us… He has not abandoned us … He is not just on the other side of the desert waiting for us to get through it… He is right there in the midst of it all. Rockell says that though that might be difficult to accept or believe, we need to at least hold it as a strong possibility as we move through the desert. When we wield a lot emotional energy it drains us of physical energy also, so when we reach this point we desperately need to take time to rest. Before God converses with Elijah, He first attends to his physical needs — food, water and rest.
Obviously, it is possible to over-spiritualize our needs and our experience think about that … so sometimes our first priority should be to take care of our physical well-being, that we might be strengthened to face the inner journey that lies ahead. A really valuable part of that pilgrimage can be to get away from normal life for a little bit, to get out of town, or go to a retreat center — even if it is only for a few days.
Getting out of the normal rut of life can create a very helpful perspective, in much the same way that one benefits from being refreshed physically.
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Elijah tells his story to God… he tells Him of his pain, his anger, his fear, and his self-pity… he tells God his story, twice! Sometimes we need to keep telling God our story over and over until a shift happens — by the way, God is robust enough to hear our anger and our disappoint-ment as often and as forcefully as we need to express it. That means, in the desert it is important to create moments when we are still before God Ps Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights when he received the Law Ex Horeb 1 Kg Though some people place too much significance on numerology, and try to find a special meaning behind every number in the Bible, the number forty has long been recognized as being symbolically significant on account of the frequency of its occurrence, and the uniformity of its association with a period of probation, trial, and chastisement.
Jesus re-entered the world after wrestling with uncertainty, pain and doubt, and after overcoming His demons, fears and temptations. How to Overcome the Wilderness Experience. Though the experience is both confusing and discon-certing, the other side of the desert brings a far deeper and richer faith. The believers faith can be fostered if he will engage in spiritual reading and theological study — this will help him reconstruct his beliefs and learn new forms of spiritual practice, like meditation, contemplative prayer, the employment of music in personal worship, journaling, engaging with God through physical activity, and discovering a new kind of practical service or ministry that impacts the world around him.
All of these behaviors can be extremely helpful. The ultimate purpose of the wilderness is not only to develop a deep transforming faith, but to develop a profoundly energetic and rewarding intimate connection with God. The new wardrobe can embrace all kinds of wonderful colors and textures, including some of the previous garments, after a bit of alteration. Though the desert is indeed a dark and lonely place, if we will persevere and move through it like Jacob did when he wrestled with God Gen Men love status and ruling over others, and when they have it, pride will cause them to hang on to it very often at the expense of others.
Men often lie to impress their listeners with their own importance, or boast of their achievements — pride is at the root of the lie… pride resists being in a subordinate position… pride demands its rights… pride resists being humble… pride causes us to blame others for our problems. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil 1 Tim 6: Sins that have their root in sexual desire include adultery, fornication, pornography, homosexuality, lust and rape.
These three areas of our lives must come under the government of God if we are to share in His holiness. Ultimately, God wants us to go through the desert and come out on the other side of it victorious.
The Wilderness Experience
We must know that God is in complete control of our circumstances, and that He has His reasons for everything. The more I have grown in the faith, the less revelatory the Lord has been in directing my life — it is if He has been saying to me: The wilderness experiences we go through are worthwhile experiences, and we are to embrace and accept them for what they are, and persevere through to the end.
Ultimately, we need to react to wilderness experiences as mature Christians… and resolve to not wilt under the hot desert sun of spiritual aridity, but rather trust God knowing that the dryness is temporary and that He has a reason for it. Allow Him to do His work in you. By the way, everything God does is good — and God does wilderness experiences. In the ancient world… wheat was sifted to separate grain from stubble… the good from the bad. When Satan asked to sift Peter, however, his purpose was not to get rid of that which was bad in him, but to destroy his faith so that nothing good was left.
God in His omniscience allowed Satan to sift Peter to accomplish His own higher purposes.
Obviously, God in His omniscience allows Satan to have a limited degree of influence in all our lives… and though that can be unsettling for us, we must remember God always supervises the process and has the final word. While God may allow us to be severely tested, God has faithfully promised to never leave or forsake us Heb So God allows us to be sifted in order to bring honor and glory to Himself. So those of us who have faced our weaknesses head-on and watched as God took control of our inadequacies 2 Cor In the process of sifting us, God pushes us beyond our capabilities so that we have to trust Him ; furthermore, He lets us fail at times so that we do not lose sight of our frailty and His perfection.
Though Peter was sifted by Satan, God had a different agenda for allowing the process: If we will stay faithful to the process, we will see God turn our times of sifting into glorious monuments to His grace and mercy. Incredible as it may seem, God will even use our faith failures to bless others!
By the way, once you get through a sifting process, you have an obligation to strengthen and encourage others who are in the process of being shaken and feel as if they are on the prong of a winnowing fork 2 Cor 1: The very power of the devil lies in the fact that he breaches our defenses and attacks us from within, and he finds his allies and his weapons in our own inmost thoughts and desires. Christians often become worried with incessant temptations; they think they should reach a stage when the power of the tempter is for ever broken, but that is not what Scripture teaches.