YOU WONT DIE IN THE WILDERNESS Conventionally, the wilderness is seen as a place of desolation, of dryness and abandonment. It is a place people do not want to be but sometimes inadvertently find themselves. But the truth is that the wilderness is much more than a place of desolation and abandonment. It is a crucible for refinement, a place of burnishing where an individual rough as an uncut diamond is purified and emerges spotless and sparkling like a finished gem stone. There are some people today who despite their best efforts find themselves in the wilderness of pain, lack and obscurity. They love God and do His bidding but still cannot understand why they find themselves on the margins of society. They are either jobless, unable to pay their rent, unmarried despite being of marriage age in their reckoning and that of society. For others it may be stagnation in the workplace-despite been diligent and hardworking they find themselves stuck on the same spot for years without elevation. For yet others it may be childlessness in marriage or an unremitting health challenge. The list is endless. The fact is that no matter what it is that we go through, God is clearly aware. Because the wilderness is God’s processing factory, He has led you there for a reason. Recall that Moses, raised a prince in Pharaoh’s household had to abide in the wilderness for forty years. Undoubtedly, Moses had his heart in the right place. He had a passion for justice, a fact that made him (believing he was an Egyptian) to kill a fellow Egyptian who he felt was mistreating an Israelite. But God was looking for more than a passion for justice. For someone who would lead God’s people as Moses was called to do, calmness of spirit and levelheadedness were clearly required as Moses himself would find out later while chaperoning the Israelites in the wilderness. God had to chip off the rough edges and plane him all round so that he would be ready for the crucial assignment. We later see the result of the divine chiseling of Moses’ personality when later in Numbers 12 the fiery tempered man is described as the meekest man that ever lived. It was the same Moses, who when God had had it with headiness and murmurings of the Israelites that stayed God’s hand and prevented wholesale destruction of the people. The Israelites themselves had to spend a very long time in the wilderness because God was preparing them for the challenges they would face as a nation. It was for this reason that a journey that would have normally lasted forty days lasted a whole forty years. As some of them wondered why the journey was taking so long, God told them in clear terms that since they were still too few in number and were likely to be devoured by wild beasts in the land he promised them, they were to tarry a while in the wilderness. Aside Moses, a number of other biblical heroes including our Lord Jesus Christ tasted the wilderness experience and emerged stronger. So, today as you abide in that wilderness, know that you will not die in it. Because it is the Lord that is leading you through it, you will emerge stronger and better. You will shine like the stars in the firmament in the mighty name of Jesus. There is of course a flipside to God induced wilderness and this is the one that leads to spiritual and physical death. If the reason for your dwelling in the wilderness is the result of sin and disobedience, it is possible that your wilderness will become a place of unremitting suffering and anguish except you retrace your steps. The bible clearly tells us that there is a way that seems right to a man but which in the end leads to destruction. A lot of people today fail to make a connection between the choices they make, the lives they lead and the fate that ultimately befalls them. As the physicists would tell us, action and reaction are equal and opposite; meaning that a lot of us today are dwelling in the wilderness because we have missed the way. We are suffering because our spiritual anchor has unhinged from the heavenly port. To get out of it you must return to the Source in humility and repentance. God bless you.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 15:26:59 +0000