(If you haven’t read Part 1, click the link to read now!) Last post, we talked about what to do when we feel broken and lost, when God seems distant. We talked about what a wilderness season is and the lie of abandonment. Today, now that we’ve covered the basics let’s look at how God’s people survived a wilderness season. Here’s how to survive when you feel broken and lost.
In the Wilderness
In the Bible, there was a time when God’s people were coming out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. In addition, to get to the promised land, they had to travel across the desert. Through many circumstances, what should have been an 11-day journey took 40 years! They were stuck in transition. At the end of the 40-year period, God speaks to his people, and this is what he tells them:
2 Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. 3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 NIV
God gives His purpose for allowing His people to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Similarly, when we wander in our spiritual wildernesses, we can know God is very likely taking us on that journey to do three things:
- TO HUMBLE YOU
- TO KNOW WHAT WAS IN YOUR HEART
- TO SEE WHETHER YOU WOULD KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS
TO HUMBLE YOU
Let’s start with the first purpose: humility. In my experience, my first response to the wilderness was performance. I thought to myself,
“If this is a test of faith, I’m going to be found worthy.”
“I just have to believe hard enough, and I’ll get to breakthrough.”
“I can fight hard enough, and we’ll get somewhere.”
No “Testing Out”
In my high school, provided that you could take a test and show that you knew all the knowledge required for a certain course, you could “test out” of a subject and avoid having to take the entire class. Once I realized I was in a wilderness season, I thought, I can test out! I can graduate from this season! I tried to do this for several months before I visited with our Christian counselor and she said something that stopped my in my tracks, “Katie, maybe this isn’t about testing out of the class. Maybe God’s waiting for you to find a desk and sit down.”
“…maybe this isn’t about testing out of the class. Maybe God’s waiting for you to find a desk and sit down.”
Humility is admitting I need you to teach me in this season. I had a lot of head knowledge. Additionally I knew who God was, and I knew I was his beloved daughter. But what I didn’t have was the heart knowledge. So I stopped trying to “test out” and sat down.
The wilderness isn’t a pass/fail performance test. It’s a classroom, a time to sit down and listen. In the wilderness, you don’t need to study and have all the right answers or gain a certain kind of knowledge. The lesson you are trying to learn is this: who is the teacher. I can’t learn that by studying harder or performing better, I can only learn that by spending time with and having intimacy with God.
TO KNOW WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART
The wilderness is going to take heart work.
Here’s the truth, If you are not processing your emotions with the Lord, you’re going to process them elsewhere because we don’t want to stay in pain.
Responses to pain:
- We are a prisoner of a positive past.
- It’s easy in a difficult place to long for the “good old days” before this season started.
- If this journey through the wilderness is about intimacy with the Lord, that requires presence. That means you have to be in the here and now. Therefore, it is required that you learn to sit in pain to process it with Him.
- We try to go forward on my own ahead of God.
- Staying stuck in pain is the ultimate test of trust.
- If the lie I’m believing is God has abandoned me, it will be uncomfortable to not try to rush ahead and “fix” the situation or try to get out as fast as possible. In doing this, you might just miss the lessons God is trying to teach you.
- We numb out.
- Consequently, this only makes us feel more distant from God, and we cannot process our emotions with Him as we are completely out of touch with the relationship.
Considering these pitfalls, how do we stay present???
Wholehearted in the Wilderness
In order to stay in the relationship, I got these journals. And everyday as I could make myself, I wrote what I felt. It was hard, especially because I was numb! Ultimately it took some time to get to know what I was actually feeling.
In fact, if you’re feeling numb, here’s some helpful questions to ask yourself. Journal the answers.
What is the texture of your heart? Is it tight like a rubber band, warm like a candle, tender like a bruise?
If you could draw your heart, what would it look like? Would it be bumpy or curved? What would it be made of?
Next, I would journal, I would bring those things before the Lord. “God I feel…” and then I would allow God to speak to me. I would allow him to minister to my heart. Sometimes he would say a lot. Other times he would say a little. Sometimes I would feel a lot. Other times it took weeks for me to feel anything at all.
Still, the only thing that didn’t help was choosing not to show up to the conversation with him. It didn’t help to not show up to class.
TO SEE WHETHER YOU WOULD KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS
Today, there are some days I’ve felt like, “God, I’m done. I don’t feel like you’re here. I can’t hear you, I can’t feel you, BUT, today, I’m going to show up anyways and trust you.”
In the wilderness we learn to trust in the word of the Lord over our own emotions, over our situation, even in a fruitless season where it feels like His presence is missing.
With this in mind, remember how we said the devil’s a liar? Well, to combat a lie, you have to rely on the truth. In Deuteronomy 6, God says,
6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9
Altogether, He wants us to know the truth: this is who your God is! Also, in Deuteronomy 7:9, He says, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.”
3 PROMISES in the WILDERNESS
In conclusion, I want to share 3 promises God is giving you in this season.
- God is here.
- Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”
- He is taking care of you.
- The next thing I want you know is, whenever you feel God has abandoned you, you can know he is taking care of you.
- There are miracles in the wilderness. We long for miracles of fruitfulness and revival – the promised land, but that is not the miracle of the wilderness.
- The miracle of the wildernesses is that God is sustaining you. In fact, if we go on to read in Deuteronomy 8 God mentions his people’s clothing did not wear and their feet did not swell these 40 years.
- So you should’ve worn out. You should’ve laid down and given up long ago! But He’s sustaining you. God’s bringing you closer and He’s brining you into intimacy with Him.
- I love the Lord in the desert more than I’ve ever loved Him in any other season.
- The wilderness season is a season. This season will not last forever.
7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey…
Deuteronomy 8:7-10
The Greatest Gift
While in the wilderness season, you may feel hopeless and broken, there are special gifts that God is giving you, even here. There is a closeness with God – a way to know the teacher so much better than you could learn in any other classroom environment. He sees your pain, He loves you, and He has not abandoned you. May you be filled with hope anew!
Blessings,
Katie
