The Glory of the Wilderness

 

Have you ever been promised something, but then you had to wait for it? That is usually what happens with promises. But then, seeing it fulfilled is so much more glorious after the waiting. I have come to think of this season of waiting as the tension of the unfulfilled promise. In the past few months, I have become extremely familiar with this season. Every time God speaks a promise to us, there is a time where he takes us through the wilderness of testing and waiting before the fulfillment of that promise. We see this all throughout Scripture. God promised Abraham and Sarah a son, but they had to wait 25 years before they had Isaac. God told the Israelites about the Promise Land, but they wandered 40 years in the desert before entering. David was anointed as king, but he spent years in the wilderness fleeing from Saul before he became king. Even Jesus spent 40 days in the desert before beginning his ministry. Why the tension? Why the waiting? Intimacy with God. I am thoroughly convinced that everything God does he does to be closer to us. In the tension of the unfulfilled promise, it is easy to be disappointed, to think God is no longer faithful, or at least no longer faithful to you. To trust only what your eyes can see. But God is moving in the waiting. When we cannot see what he’s doing, so we think he’s doing nothing, he is asking us these questions: “Will you trust me? Will you believe I am who I say I am? Will you believe I’ll do all that I said I will?” In this tension, when everything you encounter and experience in the world tells you that you shouldn’t trust God, and you still choose him, something shifts deep inside of you. His character is branded into your heart like never before. Your faith roots go deeper and deeper as you stand on the promise of God. The word of God and his promises become real truth, and what you see and experience becomes secondhand. We really only have two choices in this tension: we can choose to harden our hearts toward God in unbelief or we can choose to trust him and walk by faith into the promise.  Abraham came to trust God’s character so deeply in the wilderness that when God asked him to sacrifice his son, he immediately obeyed. Some of David’s most beautiful and heartfelt love songs to God came out of his season in the wilderness. When you choose the latter, not only will you have more intimacy with God than ever before but all the sudden you will find yourself standing in the midst of your fulfilled promise. And it will be better than anything you could have hoped for. It was and always is for me.

I have seen God fulfill his promises to me over and over; he always proves faithful. He is always good. But here I am, finding myself standing here again in the midst of this tension. Believing God for something I cannot see. He’s done it before, why is it so hard to believe he’ll do it again? I don’t necessarily feel full of faith. I want the blessing of God without the testing or trial. But this morning God spoke to me about this and said, “Katie, the wilderness is not bad. This is where Moses met me face to face. Where Jesus battled Satan and won. It is your choice, but it is meant to be the deepest place of intimacy.” And he gave me the promise of Hosea 2:14,

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak tenderly and to her heart. There I will make the valley of trouble to be for her a door of hope and expectation.” 

So I have resolved to embrace the wilderness. Unbelief will not shut me out of the promise of God and I will not harden my heart. I will let him turn my places of trouble into hope and expectation and faith.  I will remain persuadable, and he will persuade me, yet again, of his faithfulness.

I have also resolved to never stop asking God for promises and believing him for huge things. No matter how risky, hard, or painful the process is, it is always worth it. I will not settle for mediocrity to avoid risk and I will not have a backup plan for the promises of God. Because I know that hope never disappoints. And dreaming with God never disappoints. Trusting him will not disappoint me. I have been through the fire, and I always come out saying He is good. Walking by faith, we will never get burned. We will come out as pure gold.