Wilderness Nuggets

I want to share a few things that God has spoken to me throughout my wilderness journey that have helped to propel me forward. Sometimes during our wilderness, we may faint because the trial or training feels like it is too much to bear. We may also get distracted and start to swerve from the main path God wants us on, or we may start to coast because we are getting weary or lazy and just don't feel like trying anymore. Sometimes we may just dig our heels in and sit down and refuse to go any further. Because of these things, the Holy Spirit will usually intervene and speak a timely word to us to help to get us to get back on course and making the progress God wants us to make in order to change. Here are some nuggets He shared with me during my wilderness time and I hope that they can be as much of a blessing to you, as they were to me.

1. Focus on the daily progress you are making on the inside of your soul, and do not allow yourself to get distracted or discouraged by the shut down condition of your outside life. Focus on your own growth and areas that need to change, and not on the areas that need to in the other peoples lives around you.

When you get discouraged or impatient about how you have to painstakingly work on changing your behavior every day, just remember that God shut down the outside to change the inside, and that He just wants the least amount of distractions as possible. When you come out the other side and see all the wonderful work that He has accomplished in you, then you will be thankful for even the restrictions you had to live under while in the wilderness, because they shaved off time for you. Also, try to just focus on your own personal growth and try not be distracted by what God may or may not be doing in others around you. A leader does what most others will not, so don't get upset if God requires more from you than from those around you. A leader is in the lead.

2. If you choose to believe a lie after knowing the truth, then that is your own choice, and you alone will needlessly bear the suffering that it causes because you alone chose to believe the lie and ignore the truth. Walking in the truth is a moment by moment choice, so choose truth.

Sometimes in the wilderness, we may have to watch our vision die more than a few times, or get our hopes up only to see them dashed again and again. We can get a real attitude against God because it looks like He is mistreating us or doing a poor job of leading us. We are faced with a choice when this happens, we can either allow ourselves to give in to self-pity and anger and start railing at God, or we can re-embrace the truth about our situation and keep our peace. Like Joseph in prison, there will be times when we think we see the way out only to find it to be another false door. We must learn to trust in God’s goodness and wisdom, especially in our times of greatest disappointment and disillusionment.

3. Learning to love is the root key to all that we do, and is a critical requirement to leaving the wilderness.

We must learn to mix Gods love into all that we do for and with people because that is God’s foundation for serving others. You may learn a lot in the wilderness academically, but if you are still criticizing, judging, and/or mistreating those around you, then you will need to deepen your love walk in order to get out of the wilderness. Who you are at home, is who you really are. So if your family are angry with you a lot because of how you are treating them, then that shows that you need more of Gods love flowing through your heart and life before you are safe enough to be released from the wilderness to serve the many. God is love and we must allow His love to live through us in order to help people.

4. You can be stranded in the wilderness if you choose to be, either by unwillingness, rebellion, willful digression, or non-repentance. But God will do everything possible to help you to move forward as long as you stay willing.

This may sound like a rough word, but it actually helped me to get more serious about my daily work on personal growth in the wilderness. Somehow I though that it would be 95% God and 5% my cooperation. But after my wilderness just kept dragging on, I asked the Lord one day what the hold up was. He said that He would not release me from the wilderness until I was actually ready, and that I had better start getting on the ball and working on changing, or I could be stuck there forever. This motivated me greatly to start cooperating more and complaining and coasting less. He wasn't going to budge or wave some magic wand over me to change me, I had to take it very seriously and understand that God is a very responsibly minded parent that won't just pass you through if you are not truly ready to move ahead. Somehow I thought that He would just step in and do some miracle to change me so that I would be free, but it just takes work. Just like an earthly father would not put his son in charge of the family company if that son had serious problems that needed to change, God will not put His children in charge of things unless they are truly safe and ready to serve. If God sent you forward prematurely, then those unfinished areas would eat you alive and ruin what He was trying to build, plus it could hurt a lot of innocent people. There is no going back to Egypt, and no going in Canaan until we are actually ready. But do not be afraid, God only leads people into the wilderness that He knows can make it through.