Awareness in the Wilderness

Have you had the experience of looking into the night sky away from the city lights? You suddenly are mesmerized by the amazing celestial display of stars that you usually don’t notice in the city. Have you been on a road trip away driving through vast expanses of desert or grassland or amazing landscape? Have you been overcome with a sense of wonder of the natural beauty that you appreciated at a deep soul level? In a similar way, it is the wilderness experience that God allows in our life that helps us get this heightened awareness of God more than in our usual day to day!

The wilderness is a place of transition, an in-between place that is not comfortable. A place of testing, a place of temptation and a place to make gear shifts. The Bible is replete with examples of wilderness experience and it is place to make a wise choice that determines our destiny. The Israelites lived through forty years in the desert, David experienced the wilderness as Saul chased after him and even our Lord Jesus Christ was not spared as He experienced temptation in the wilderness. These wilderness places are hard and lonely places that forge, shape and nourish us for the greater calling in us that otherwise we won’t be prepared for.

The Israelites spent forty years through the desert as God wanted to shape His people. As the saying goes, the Israelites were out of Egypt but God had to take Egypt out of them. God wanted a people who were tuned to Him, a people who were aware of their hunger and thirst for God more than any other appetite that the world had cultivated in them. The Israelites did not learn the lessons in the wilderness and they whined and complained and refused to stop focusing on their discomfort and problems instead of turning their eyes towards God. As a result, God took them through the desert for forty years before entering the Promised Land instead of what could have been a mere eleven day journey.
Deuteronomy 8:2-4
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. 

In contrast, David was someone who made the choice to turn to God in the wilderness. As he was hunted down and chased through the wilderness by Saul, David became even more acutely aware of God. He chose to focus on God and hungered and thirsted after God like never before instead of complaining of the unfair plight he found himself in. He was so aware of God that even when he had the opportunity to finish off Saul, he chose to let him go because of the awareness that even the one who was after his life was the anointed of God! What a divine pursuit of God in the wilderness!
1 Samuel 24:5-6
⁵ Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe. ⁶ He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, or lay my hand on him; for he is the anointed of the Lord.”

Jesus too prepared Himself for ministry by overcoming temptation in the wilderness. Jesus chose to stand on the promises of God and battle the spiritual forces of darkness which were contending for the destiny and mission He carried. Jesus made a clear resolute choice that He would focus on standing on God’s word and the relationship He had with the Father rather than seek after temporal pleasures of the world. Jesus is our example too in the wilderness of our life in not losing focus even in the deepest intense places of unrest, solitude and temptation.
Matthew 4:4
⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’

Perhaps you too are in a place of wilderness today. You feel alone, hollow, unfulfilled and in discomfort as you battle the temptations and trials all around you. The wilderness experience can expose what is hidden deep within the recesses of our being and it can be a temptation to lull ourselves with the pleasures of the world and focus elsewhere instead of God. My prayer for you is that you too like David and Jesus will face the onslaught head on with God’s power and make the wise choice to run after God. May you have a heightened awareness of God in your wilderness experience and may your appetite for Him increase above all else. Choose today to make this gear shift as your life and destiny beckons you to come up higher for His glory!
Psalm 42:1-2
¹ As the deer pants for streams of water,
    so my soul pants for you, my God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
    When can I go and meet with God?