Are you in the Wilderness?

Sometimes it seems as though our prayers are unheard or at least unanswered, and that no matter how hard we try to live our lives for God, that it's like beating our heads against the wall. We feel "alone", even though the Lord has said He will never leave us. We try and try to hear His voice and only hear silence.  We don't feel His nearness or His love.  It can be very frightening and often causes us to question ourselves, our salvation, and even God. It's like we're desperate to get the lines of communication back, and we run around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to do just that.  We talk to our friends, maybe our pastor, and try and find out what we did wrong or are doing wrong, and constantly question ourselves as well as God. Prayer seems harder, reading His Word seems harder and sometimes it seems like we can't understand what we're reading too. We have this big "WHY?" hanging over us all the time like a black cloud. 

Due to our sin nature, we often wind up making this experience much worse then it would have been.  That black cloud becomes larger and darker over time and we feel like it's never going to end. The reason we tend to make it worse is because we pay so much attention to our feelings and because we focus so much on ourselves and all our questions.  We wind up doing the exact opposite of what God tells us to do often because we're so determined to know "why".

Don't get me wrong.  There's nothing wrong with asking ourselves or God questions.  In fact, God tells us to do that.  He tells us to examine ourselves to see if we're in the faith.  The problem is even after realizing that we aren't living in unrepented sin, we continue to search our hearts and minds as though there might be some little thing hiding there that we're totally unaware of and that God hasn't deigned to show us. As though God would punish us for something we're unaware of and have no way of discovering on our own. It's at that point that we're focusing too much on ourselves.

God also tells us that when we're going through trials to ask Him for wisdom so we can discover "why". Again though, after asking Him for wisdom and help, we then act as though He's withholding it and kind of dangling it like a carrot in front of our noses to lure us on. We act that way usually because it seems to us that nothing has changed and we still don't know the answer. 

So what should we do? We need to take our focus off of ourselves and put it on God and His Word.  We need to remember that He's told us again and again not to trust our feelings, especially when our feelings don't line up with His Word.  His Word tells us that He will never leave us, and that He dwells within us.  You can't get much closer to a person then that!  That alone tells us that our "feeling" is wrong and that He is still right here with us.  We're told that He does hear our prayers and that He does answer us, so again, our feeling is wrong.  It also tells us that our "sight" is wrong when we think our prayers aren't being answered.  Somehow we've slipped into living by sight instead of faith when it should be the other way around.  

When we're in a wilderness experience, it often seems extra hard to make ourselves spend time in the Bible and/or prayer every day. We come up with all kinds of excuses why we can't.  We're too tired, we don't feel well, we're late for work, or we've worked late, the kids are driving us crazy, spouse is driving us crazy, etc.and besides, it's already bedtime, or we have to get the chores done. Even worse is that if we give in to our excuses and don't spend time in His Word one day, the next day it's even harder!  And every day we skip it, it seems to continue to get harder and harder to "find the time" for it.  .This is even more true for the person who wasn't spending time in His Word regularly to start with.  It becomes a vicious circle. 

Jesus Himself explained this to us when He said, —Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. (Matthew 13:12)  When we obey God and/or His Word, the clearer and louder His voice gets, when we disobey, His voice gets softer, our hearts begin to harden and we understand less as our minds are dulled. The problem is that we often don't really associate God's Word with His "voice".  We're so sure that we're not hearing from Him that we forget that Jesus IS the Word and when we read His Word, we are hearing from Him - we're hearing His voice. When we don't feel like praying, don't feel like reading the Bible, those are the times when we most need to do them!

When we're going through a wilderness period, we need to get into His Word and remember what God uses the wilderness for.  Think back to the Exodus of the Jew's.  When they left Egypt, they were nothing but a race of slaves.  It was in the wilderness that God made them into a race of priests, and a Nation. There He gave them His laws and taught them His Way. Most of all, (to me anyway) He taught them to rely on Him and trust Him.  He provided everything they needed during that time.  I love these verses that show some of what He did for them, and they also tell us why they went through the wilderness: Deut 8:2–5 —Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers 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. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 

This is often the very reason we go through a time of walking in the wilderness. He's teaching us to trust Him and to rely on Him and on His Word.  Not our feelings or what we want, or what we think is right or best, but on what He says. Isaiah tells us what to do when we feel like we're going through the wilderness: Isaiah 50:10–11 —Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment.  When the Bible says we're to trust in the Name of the Lord, it's saying to trust in His character, for that's what His Name represents - Who He Is. So we're to trust what He has revealed to us about Himself through His Word.  The Lord says through Isaiah that the danger in the wilderness is that we'll try to light fires for ourselves to light our own way, instead of relying and trusting in Him alone. When we do that, it leads only to torment. God says instead we're to simply trust Him.  Another way of putting that would be to say we're to live by faith instead of sight.  He also tells us that this is only temporary, and it will come to an end.

We need to remember one other thing that we're frequently told to do, and that's to "wait patiently for the Lord".  We usually think of "waiting" as being idle, but that's not necessarily so.  Waiting simply means that we're to continue to obey God daily in the things we already know about, while we wait expectantly to see what He's been doing during this time and how it will help us to live lives worthy of His calling. Waiting on Him, is like a child going to bed knowing their Mom will wake them up in the morning so they can get to school on time.  We wait on Him knowing that He really is at work in our lives, doing something that will be for our good and His glory, even though everything seems dark and silent.

Lastly don't fall into the trap of thinking that how you experienced your relationship with God prior to this wilderness period was perfect and how it should always be. This is yet another instance of thinking that we know what's right or how things should be. The Lord may very well be trying to teach you something new about Him, and open your relationship with Him up to a whole new level, while you're holding desperately onto an idea or experience of what you think your relationship with Him should be like. Remember how the Israelites reacted when they heard God's voice for themselves? (Deut 5:23–27)  That's kind of what they were doing too.  They were afraid so they wanted things to stay as they were and have Moses as their mediator instead of having a personal relationship with Him themselves. We tend to hate change and fight it instead of just trusting God and waiting on Him.

Psalm 130:5–6 —I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. 

Psalm 40:1 —I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.  

Psalm 27:14 —Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. *