The Wilderness Experience

What do I mean when I say wilderness experience? It is a bit different for us all. Perhaps is a faith crisis or a time of lost, both physical and emotional. A time of silence in your walk with God. A season of uncertainty, unanswered prayers, banishment, isolation, persecution, uncertainty, impossibility, suffering, shame, or maybe a time of incredible transformation, where the end result is uncleared. A time of unknowns, a time of spiritual brokenness, a time of living in the consequences of our sin, where the only way out is through the path of repentance and contrition.

The medical world may even call it depression. Of which of course there are also many different level and experiences. Feelings of sadness, fatigues, worthlessness, trouble making decisions, insomnia and even restlessness. I am not however a medical doctor, therefore my hope is not to diagnosed some sort of physical ailment that we may suffer from but what I like to do is look in God’s word in the hopes of understanding those times of dryness, our own seasons of uncertainty, our own as the Apostle James would put it, journey of trials and temptations.

Here is a question for us to ponder as we begin... Do we personally cause these events in our lives, or are they solely God's design? Truly, the word of God reminds us in Romans 8:28 (CEB) that for “those who are called according to God's purpose, we know that God works all things together for good.” A well known and repeated scripture, but have we ever paused to ponder its meaning? This verse does not mean good in the sense of healthy comforts, but it is used in the context of Romans 8:29, which reminds us of our need to “conformed to the image of Christ,” and as a result, he will weave together all of our circumstances and happenstances to bring about closer fellowship with Christ, were we will then bear good fruit (Galatians 5:22-23) for the kingdom of God, and even carried on to verse 30, where we will be granted final justification and ultimate glorification, just as we read in our scripture this morning.

Because of these verses I must be clear, I do not think God intends to get us out of particular trials, not right away anyway, because I believe he is more concerned with our eternal condition than our momentary discomforts. As a result, I pose to you that when trials come, when we are called to travel through a spiritual wilderness, that we must bear those trials, survive them some of you may echo, they are purposeful and intentional whether we caused them or God designs them. The Apostle James encourages us to “count it all joy when we go through trials of various kinds, for it is a simply test of our faith and that testing will produce endurance and like an athlete that endurance will help us to mature in our faith, to be complete, to lack nothing.” (James 1:3 CEB)

Which answers the question of why must we go through these times of wilderness in the first place? Because God is verifying our faith, to strengthen our commitment to him and to produce in us a Jesus like Character, that faces life in full dependence of God as its provider rather than on its own feeble strength. But why must He test it at all? Because it is our nature to fail him, to forget his love for us, therefore He seeks to humble us, not humiliate but really make us more and more like His own son Jesus.

Yes of course in the midst of our anxiety, lord it hurts, yes father I am in pain, dear Jesus save from this storm, but all along the lesson still must be learned, the character reinforcement must continue to take root! Where is our hope in all of this? In the fact that God is gracious towards all of his children and in the end, he tells us that his Grace is all enough, always sufficient, always present. Paul says this very thing just a few verses before in Romans 8:18 where he declares his belief that “our present suffering is nothing compared to the coming glory that is going to be revealed to us.”

I tend to believe that honestly and vulnerability are two ingredients that God often uses to strengthen our faith and so it is my intention to be fully vulnerable with you. I do not seek you pity, but my hope is to simply attempt to relate to perhaps your own wilderness experience. As I look at the length of my life, I can see God working in many areas of my life, keeping me safe in spite of many dumb things I’ve done before. Yet what I have come to call my own wilderness experience, began to take shape around 2010 (yes 10+ years in the making) when my relationship with my wife started to show signs of stress.

I was so preoccupied with what I tough was owed to me, what I thought I had earned through hard work in my ministry that I sadly neglected many of my duties to what I have now come to recognize as my primary ministry which is my family. Sure there were good days, great family cations, fantastic date nights, even ministerial success, but soon the bad began to outnumber the good and yet I ignored it by focusing on the wrong things. Promotions, recognition, praise of others for my perceived talents and abilities, picking fights with those in leadership over my own erroneous sense of arrogance, disrespect towards others as well. At the same time experiencing betrayal from those I thought cared for me, being shred to pieces by many I had come to rely on for spiritual encouragement and support.