Resigning Yourself to Change

If you have just entered the wilderness, or even if you have been in it for a while, you may feel that you want to find a quick way of escape at times. Sometimes the fire can seem almost unbearable, and you may just want out. This is normal, and you are not the first person to feel this way. Most people that enter military boot camp often ask themselves, "How did I get myself into this mess?"

The children of Israel felt this way, and they tried to run when God told them they would be in the wilderness for a long while. They tried to go forward even though God warned them not to, and they ended up badly defeated by the Amalekites (Numbers 15:39-45). When you enter the wilderness, most, if not all of your choices end, and you find out that God is much more sovereign than you had previously thought.

There are some people who simply tell God that they will not give up "this" or "that", or that they will not do "this" or "that". Although it's a tough truth, you can die in the wilderness if you flat out refuse to comply with what God is requiring of you. But know this, it takes an awful lot to get to this point, so don't freak out just yet and think that you've blown it. You haven't, or you probably wouldn't even be reading this right now.

The best thing you can do at this point is to just relax, submit, and re-cooperate with whatever the Lord wants to do with you. All grumbling, and rebellion, will just be a waste of time, and it will just lengthen your stay in the wilderness; or worse, it can bring on some "loving correction" by the Lord. Complaining is like spiritual quicksand, the more you do it, the deeper in despair you sink. Being thankful and praising God lifts you up out of it.

Just know and remember that God is doing these things to help you, and to change you so that He can use you in this last great harvest of souls in the earth. This broken world needs you so it's all good, even though every other word may be "Ouch". Not to mention, you don't want to have to drag all of your undealt with sin problems into Heaven with you when you die. There were a lot of not so glorious scenes in my life-review video that I am very thankful will now be edited out because of His work. Complete repentance erases the bad parts of our life-review tape.

Though you may feel very weary right now, you will make it through this my friend. God will take care of your needs. He's very kind and compassionate, and He knows how hard this can be for you. When you see all the positive changes He creates in you, you will be so happy and thankful you went through God's wilderness experience. And the more that gets fixed, the less you need to fix. Your energy can then be focused on other good things, rather than just using all of your energy to keep all the old pain pushed down inside you. You will be 100% free in the end.