The Wilderness: My Classroom

Recently, I learnt that God only sends his children into the wilderness to shift them from one form of relationship with Him to another. The first people He took to the desert were the Israelites straight out of Egypt. Why did He take them there? Well think about it this way, they had been in Egypt for 400+ years so they were so well trained in and comfortable with the ways of the Egyptians they had adapted them as their ways. They were so embroiled in the Egyptian way of life that He had to use the wilderness to wean them of the ways they had known and train them afresh in His ways that had to be their way of life.

The other noticeable ones who went into the wilderness were Jesus and John the Baptist and those stories we know well. John went into the desert to fulfil the prophesy over his life that he was the voice crying out in the wildrness prepare the way of the Lord. In there he became accustomed to the voice of God and understood the times and season so when he came to the Jordan to baptise it was clear who he was and he was ready to minister to Jesus when he came by.

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In the case of Jesus, He went into the wilderness to encounter the might of darkness and overcome it so that we would have an example of what it means to rise above the challenges and limitations of life. He countered all the works and plans of darkness to take Him down and make room for us to rise no matter what.

The one I didn’t really realise was on the same level was David. He had grown up with many brothers and was assigned to care for the sheep. He was young when he was anointed, but irony was that his father had to be asked more than once if he had another son. Yet being forgotten by his father didn’t change him, he went back to the fields to care for the sheep. In his time with the sheep, he learnt to fight and kill his enemies that made him the best candidate for the fight with Goliath. As if that wasn’t enough, Saul attempted to murder him and he had to go on the run for almost a decade yet he never lost his faith in the word of God. He never let go of the knowledge of who he was and who God had said he would become even when he was under the authority or another person.

It got me thinking about how easily we sometimes let go of the word of God when we are in hard places and we don’t understand. When life challenges everything we know relentlessly and nothing seems to be working. It reminded me that we must develop the capacity to keep walking even when we are exhausted because we are certain that there is a good plan for us in God’s scheme of things and it will be absolutely breath-taking when it comes to pass regardless of how hard the walk has been.

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It is true that God doesn’t go back on His word and we can trust Him to be all we need Him to be when He says something. He says we are loved and accepted. He says He knows the plan He has for us and it is for good. He says there is a method to the intensity that is our life. He says there is victory coming maybe not in the way we think but victory all the same. He says we are the apple of His eye and so are never outside His purview. I know sometimes it feels like He has forgotten us or we are hidden from His sight but we are not.

Even in the long hours of work, the loneliness, the sadness in heart, the sense of loss and the frustration we must realise that this is preparation for something. There are critical lessons the season must teach us and we must learn them quickly. Standing on God’s word that doesn’t return to Him void but accomplishes the purpose He sent it out for is the key. This word is our guarantee that the process will not break us but will position us for a great move of God.

You are so visible to Him…absolutely visible. Remember and hold onto that…you are visible to him.

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