I am not a fan of anything that slightly resembles a wilderness.
We visited the same wilderness that the Bible describes for us when we were in the Middle East a few years ago.
Here are some pictures:
A literal “wilderness” is barren and dry.
Psalm 107 describes it as a “desert waste.”
If you’re stuck in a wilderness, you are lonely, thirsty, and hungry, because there is (as you can see) NOTHING THERE!
Deuteronomy 8 also describes the wilderness, the one Moses lived in for forty years, and the one the Israelites circled, also for forty years:
It is great (large in magnitude and extent), terrifying (dreadful – probably because everything alive there will bite you, sting you, or eat you!). filled with fiery (poisonous) serpents (snakes) and scorpions (see what I mean?), little water, and every where you look there are dried up bushes and rocks. Besides all this, when I looked up average temperatures of the Sinai Peninsula, the source I looked at just said, “Hot and hotter.”
I spent a good two weeks one time in a wilderness just like that in Northern Kenya…on the back of a camel, no less. Hot. Thirsty. Uncomfortable. Miserable! I can understand why the Israelites complained.
As I said, I’m not a fan of the wilderness.
I’m pretty sure no one is.
Metaphorical wildernesses are just as bad…spiritual ones, too.
They have the very nature of physical ones.
Re-read the description above.
I’ve lived through those, as well, and for the most part every wilderness I’ve survived has given me a story to tell, a lesson-learned, a character-redeemed on the other end.
The same thing was true for Moses…
…and, it was true for the Israelites.
Here’s what the Lord says through His servant Moses at the end of the forty years:
“Remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble you, testing you so that you might know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And, He humbled you and let you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know, which your fathers did not know, that He might make you to know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:2-3).”
1. God led them to the wilderness. He had a reason for taking them on that forty year path that went around in circles. And, as a side note…isn’t it interesting, in Matthew 4:1, we read: “And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” The Lord does that…and, there is always a purpose.
2. The #1 reason God led the Israelites to the wilderness? To humble them and to help them see exactly what was in their hearts!
3. The #2 reason? To teach them that they had to be dependent on God for everything – the food they put in their mouths and the food they spooned into their minds.
4. In the wilderness (Hebrew: the midbar), separated from all the distractions of the world about us, God is more able to give us a Word (Hebrew: dabar). There will always be a Word He’d like to speak over us, whether it’s a declaration or a promise; and, He needs us out of Egypt and Egypt out of us in order for us to hear Him.
Nope…wilderness wanderings are no Disneyland.
They aren’t meant to be.
They are, for us, a school.
And, the lessons are most uncomfortable.
But, in every wilderness, the Lord is there (we are never alone); and, He is melting, molding, shaping, remaking, creating us to look more and more like Him.
The heat of the desert waste will refine us; and, the Word of the Lord that comes in that place will satisfy us.
The end result will be: HUMILITY.
So, here are the words I want to live by: I will not fight my wildernesses (even if I don’t like them); I’ll let go of all complaining, and not allow my heart to harden, as it did my ancestors…I will receive all The LORD wants to reveal to me about my own heart, making some course corrections; and, I will listen to all He wants to speak to me about life on the other side of the desert, following in obedience.
Maybe then I will look more like my gentle and humble Jesus.
