Salt & Light : Are You Really?

Salt & Light : Are You Really?                              Kelly Durant 10-19-03

Did you notice you got something interesting with your bulletin today? A candle with some salt! This is for you to take home to remind you that you are salt & light in a perverse and wicked generation! Look up..        Matt 5:13-16

13 Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Do you remember the last time we had a family night and everyone dressed up? I have been thinking about salt and light for some time now and I want us to reflect on it’s meaning. What do we usually use salt for today? For flavoring food, right?

But let’s do what we always do when we reflect on the Bible, let’s go back to the cultural context. Before the days of refrigeration, what was salt used for? It was a preservative. You could put it on meat and make jerky. In Bolivia I use to make my own jerky; you cut the meat thin and then you cover it in salt and let the sun dry it out. Have you ever done that?

Or maybe you didn’t live without a refrigerator like I did several months one time! Or maybe you have done this if you have worked on a farm and a cow dies; how many of you have ever buried a dead cow? Well, the way we did it was we would pour a lot of salt on top of the body and it would prevent it from smelling and decaying. Do you realize that is a parallel to us as Christians, we are in a dying, decaying, putrid world, and we are the salt to preserve and save.

But what happens when Christians do not do their job of saving, preserving and shining?    Phil 2:15

15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;

My concern for you and myself is, that we must ask our selves are being an outstanding example of the love of God? Do you think you are an outstanding Christian? We are going to discuss some of the points in which the church in the US and, or I should say Christians are failing in.

+Did you know that the divorce rate in the church is the same as it is in the world?

+Did you know that Christians often suffer from depression?

+Did you know that Christians are often dishonest and do not have clean hearts?

All of this probably does not surprise you because you have seen some of it here. But what is the solution? It is not any worse here than it is in any of the other churches; No! And how do I know that?  I have asked other pastors in other American churches and they have many of the same trials that we have. We are not any worse or any better.

But the solution is to stand up and shine foe your Christian values. Christians should not be trading relationships and spouses like they trade cars! There are devastating consequences to this and believe me I have spent hundreds of hours with dozens of disturbed and agonizing people who have suffered a divorce or abandonment.

Well, here I want to tell you the solution, here, amoungst those of us who are salt and light, is the place where these hurting people should be able to come and grieve and cry. They should feel the confidence they are loved by God and they must know they are loved by God because they can feel a sincere love from us!

Do you know how many people have been driven away from Christianity by the Christians who are dead candles by their unloving, condemning, ‘well I told you so’, attitude? When someone sins in the camp and they are hurting, it is not time to throw stones, it is time to do what Jesus did, to go down and hug that person and let them know they can have a new life and not continue down that road that is almost getting them killed!

Like with Mary Magdalene! And Everytime we hear a story about someone doing a wrong thing, it is not time to start getting proud like, well, I would never do such a thing, but it is time to check your own heart! It hurts God when we sin and fail! And it also hurts us and those around us!

Despite how the Word of God brings life, and holy living guided by the Holy Spirit brings peace, there are still too many Christians out there depressed and that is against the word to worry about the morrow. Look up     Matt 6:34

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

I think we can all feel what people have inside them and what a poor testimony when the desperate people of the world come into church and find the people inside no better off than them selves! There are Christians that have never practiced all they have read. Christianity is not a belief, it is a lifestyle! We must practice our faith! (repeat)

John 14:27

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

What causes depression is worry about the material things, or internal conflicts over not getting all you lust for and desire. What causes depression also is bitterness in a heart that cannot forgive someone who wronged them in the past. Also, some people come to church but inside they have bitterness against God over their situation which is humbling them and that is what their pride may need to be humbled!

The only way out is to fight and we must fight like Don Quixote de la Mancha and conquer our obstacles and inner fears! Prayer and the Word in the Bible really work if they are sincerely applied!

And lastly, if we will be salt and light, we must maintain a high standard of honesty and purity. I don’t know about you, but if I tell a lie, or do a wrong thing, I lay awake at night unable to sleep with that thing replaying again in my head until I confess if to God and go back and right the wrong I have done! If your conscience is not clean, you will not get your prayers answered, much in the same way a parent will not want to take his son to the movies when they know the son that has stolen $20 from his wallet and acts like it never happened!

The only way to be right with God is to be in communion with Him, reviewing all you do at the end of the day if it was done right or not! To burn bright, you must be in the light! To be salty, you must be near other salt granules! Ask your self, am I a Christian others love to be with? Or do people avoid you because you preach at them but they feel you don’t really love the?

Ask yourself, am I full of the spirit, full of joy, full of love, looking for ways to serve others? Many times it has happened that the spouse who is a Christian, married to one who is not, will preach and correct and condemn them for years for not seeking God, but only after all of that fails do they try serving them with love; and it never fails that a loving, meek, and serving spirit wins others more by actions than by words! Are you being salt and light?

Soldiers, Hardened and Free!

Soldiers, Hardened and Free!                                     Kelly Durant 

2 Tim 2:1-4

2:1 Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

2 And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

4 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

Let’s learn about Soldiers, and it is from these verses in Timothy that we get all the symbolisms of the Salvation Army.

How many of you have ever lived through a Military Coup? I have about 3 times in Bolivia! We had to stay inside for a week and eat what we had stored and listen to the news of the next dictator all day! The neighbors would tell you about the ones killed. I have had machine guns pointed at me and been frisked down several times in my life. It was frightening but I felt God’s spirit close!

But I want to tell you that in this country, and in yours, there has already been an evil military coup which happened thousands of years ago! Satan has taken over all the land and corrupted it, and he has filled it with violence & gangs, perversion and porn, poverty and oppression, and disease and death! There are only two armies, God’s and Satan’s!

Eph 6:12-13

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

And soldiers, when you have a hard time standing for your Commanding Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, remember, when you can’t stand, then kneel! Remember also you are not in this war alone! I sincerely believe and hope all of you are praying for each other during the week! If you take one thin stick, you can break it easily, but many sticks bunched together cannot break!

This earth was created to be under the authority of God, but currently it is not! Jesus gave us the command to extend the Kingdom of God and that means giving your friends and family the truth even if they hate you, laugh at you, and persecute you! In verse 3 “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ”, is commanding us to be strong when others are against you, and it is sad that there are too many weak Soldiers!

Remember if Satan cannot stop you from being a Christian, he tries to make you a worthless, weak compromised Christian!

We have the command (see verse 4) to not be involved in the world as others, we are to make war on evil by doing good, by doing all that Jesus commanded!

Also, each of us has the responsibility to be overseeing what the other does so we prevent good Soldiers from falling into the enemy’s traps! Soldiers know death is a reality and they should stick together!

The Christian Soldiers of all churches are only a minority group but they have the status of a Soldier because they are willing to march out there in their neighborhoods, as Jesus did to love the unlovely, to heal the wounded, and to preach the truth of the gospel!

It will only be after our final battle with Satan in the end of the world in Armagedon that God will hit with the last Coup to regain what was His from the beginning! All of the souls of men that chose to be on his side! We are God’s soldiers and the only way to fight this war is to be disciplined resisting temptation, and standing for the right cause, the winning cause telling as many as you can about Jesus!

In the Salvation Army in the early years in London in the 1870’s and 80’s there were several dozen Soldiers of the Salvation Army that died due to rocks thrown at them in the streets. At that time there was prostitution of girls age 12, drunkenness by the majority, child labor exploitation, and horrible days.

William Booth, our founder, decided to use the pen instead of the gun to fight his battles and he wrote a book that became a best seller in His day; It was called, “In Darkest England, and the Way Out”. Everyone wanted some relief from the crime and horrible conditions and His solution was to take Jesus to the streets, preaching and helping serve the poor, and that method still works as we do today! If there was ever a church that seemed like an army going out to battle in history, it was the Salvation Army!

We often admire the martyrs for giving up their lives and dying for Christ, but unless we are willing to take orders from His Word and be obedient to Our Lord right now everyday as a Soldier, then we are not going to be ready to die for Him if that time comes!

Did you know there are a lot of Christian Soldiers in this world that have gone AWOL! That means that they were supposed to be on a duty, on an assignment, but they decided they would rather go somewhere else and have fun with the temporary pleasures of this world. Or they tried to run away from God.

Who knows what happens to people who do that? Jonah tried that, God gave him a mission, and he learned the hard way you cannot run from God! If you are called, God will not let you sleep until you run to sign up to join the fight for the right!

The problem is, our enemy wants us to think it is better and easier to go down the easy road, but the easy road is not easy at all, it is painful to reap the sin we sew! Only the Lord’s road is easy and His burden is light. Serving God may not always be easy, it wasn’t for Jesus, it is not easy for any on us, but in the end Jesus and all of us gain an eternal glory that shines forever!

So what is the essence of 2 Tim 2:4?

The Lord wants absolute love, dedication, and loyalty even if you have to suffer to prove it! In the armies of the world the men suffer a lot of cruel treatment of their bodies and minds, and if they do it, how much more should we do it for Jesus who is worthy of our love?

The very first commandment is to Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind! But if you give your loyalty to men on this earth, they will always let you down! But now we are all blessed to have Jesus as our General!

You have a Commander that is all loving, all forgiving, all-powerful, and he knows where you will best serve Him but you must obey His call! If we do not choose to be governed by God, then we will end up being governed by some other tyrant!

Just think how many people are stuck on this earth all of their lives as slaves to men and not to God! We must fight with the truth to free them! And so many lower classes are being abused and abused and we as brothers must fight to help them!

When people ask you what does the SS stand for, tell them Service & Salvation. The Army has always been famous for their shelters for the homeless. Before the slogan was SSS which is soup, soap, and salvation! The truth is in most countries there are very few institutions that care for the sick, homeless, and orphans, and the ones that do are almost always Christian!

It is up to us, as God’s soldiers and followers to bring the good news to everyone! Jesus started his ministry with these verses from Isa. And they were His mission and they are to be ours too! Listen to how Jesus expects us to fight as Soldiers..

Isa 61:1-3

61:1 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.

You do not have to have a uniform to be a soldier of Jesus! A Uniform is only an outward sign of an inward dedication, like a baptism, but it is God who knows our hearts! I am here and you tare here because we are convinced we have a wonderful ministry with many good works which prove our love & dedication to the Lord!

Any organization is only as good as their people, and I am very proud and happy with what I see in each person here today! You are the chosen ones to represent your Lord, so march forward to the prize of the high calling of God! Prayer…

The Praise Worship of God: Is Music Helping or Hindering?

The Praise Worship of God: Is Music Helping or Hindering?        Kelly Durant

Matthew 26:30 And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Acts 16:25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.

2. One of my sons installs audio visual equipment and internet systems in churches, universities and corporations.  He has gotten to know hundreds of people over the past decade and he has shared with me some of his conversations with interesting people. Today I will share an experience of a person he met who was a semi-famous praise band leader in a mega church. I will not reveal the name of the church or the name of this person but that is not what is important, what is important is the lesson.

This young man had fame, a good salary, and had sold many CDs but he wanted more than just music in his life so he went on a mission to Africa and stayed 6 months serving God. I am sure he was changed after that! Upon his return he discovered he had been replaced by his church so he was forced to move on and start his own worship filled church.

He had saved up quite a bit of money before so he opened up a type of megachurch in another city banking upon the main attraction to be the amazing and modern worship music and praise band he was famous for. He was copying what he had learned from the other mega church. How do you think that worked out? His want-to-be church flopped and he lost all his money and he was left to start all over again.

3. He said he felt like God burst his balloon but he was glad that He did! He said that now he knows God in a way He had never known Him before: He is not just singing about Him but depending and trusting in Him now. He is trusting not on his talent and treasure to bring him his purpose in God now but rather on obedience, service, and his closeness to God for new direction.

What a lesson, right? It reminds us of the verse in Mark 8:36 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? It is unusual to think that a young worship leader, who seemed to inspire dozens of thousands to worship God, could have been in real life a shallow person not fully converted.

Thank God he had the experience of serving God in Africa! These types of mission trips can change a person forever to help them wake up to the facts of how contradictory it is to think one is worshipping God if doing it by praise only. While we are entertaining ourselves in the church with all the modern technology, there is a whole world out there with billions of people suffering from a lack of having their basic human needs such as food, water, clothing, shelter and Salvation for their souls through the gospel of Jesus Christ! The modern day church has put too much emphasis on entertainment and techno toys and forgotten about holiness, service, and what God expects from the Christian as defined by Jesus’ words!

4. Who would agree with me that today too many churches put too much emphasis in the worship of God through music and technology? It is true we all do get inspired by a creative song performed in church, or heard on the radio or a CD,  or seen on YouTube but the inspiration is only a small part of living the holy life. It is not all of what God intends for us as worshippers.

As a matter of fact only a few months back a famous person in a famous megachurch praise band let millions of people down by expressing that he was more accepting of the current cultural trends of this world than he was of the Word of God!  What a disgrace! It goes to show we must always remember that we can never place our worship, adoration, and loyalty to people whom we know nothing about! They are just saved sinners like you and me but there is a problem if they are not willing to live free from sin as an example of Jesus transforming love!

Psalm 118:8 It is better to trust in the Lord Than to put confidence in man. There are so many people today that go to churches but they are more devoted to their blind selfish emotions or famous people or how popular the church is rather than to how Biblically obedient they are! And when it is a church without all the ultra-modern trappings of technology modeling the mega TV church, they feel they do not need to commit because the church is not a glorious one but it is just a humble mission and therefore unworthy. Worship is more than a song with smoke and mirrors, and more than a feeling which comes and goes!

I recall one time at the other Corps one person called me up one night with the music blasting on the phone and he said, “Do you hear that? Now that is worship, this is how I worship!” I got the message, what he meant was, I worship the trending music of the rich and famous, and what you offer in your praise band is inferior compared this! (This person had expressed many times before adoration to certain trending preachers and music so this was another attempt to impose his tastes belittling ours). People with such pride and ignorance are stumbling blocks to others who are learning about Jesus, the church, and mission!

5. Don’t misunderstand what I am communicating. I think it is great that there are great praise bands out there, that there are some amazing people who inspire me and others in song. It is encouraging to worship with the extreme varieties out there, but a song in the end is only an emotion enhancer God has designed as a hook to get his people to tune into Him. A hymn is like a warm up for the real work out, the music of God does not replace the study of God for obedience.

In our verses of today we find it only mentioned once that Jesus sang a hymn with his disciples. It does not say that he sang every time before His teaching, so how frequently Jesus and his disciples sang is anyone’s guess. Today we have traditionalized and institutionalized worship into a certain cultural music mold and we must question ourselves, are we being counter-productive with such an emphasis? Also, are we open to how other cultures praise in song? I have seen minorities and majorities be very closed minded on worship styles, sad right?

What we do know is God’s word put into song is powerful! Acts 16:25 But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.” Imagine how Paul and Silas despite all the punches, bruises, humiliation, hunger, and other horrible things they felt while inside that jail still praised God in song! I bet they got some converts right there and they were inspired despite the persecution. You can’t pin a good man down!

6. So what can we say about Salvationists and their bands? Big brass bands were the high tech audio visual in the 1800s when they started! There are several quotes by our Founders Booths that express we should be taking advantage of the cultural trends and reapplying them for God’s use and music is a must.

I have mentioned it before, but England then, with all its drunken sailors and serious alcohol problems in the 1800’s had serious social family disintegration problems as everyone would hang out at the local pubs and listen to the then popular band music, and to some degree, this still happens today.

It was clever to create alternative praise brass bands to attract those in the pubs out into the streets to hear a new song and then to get in a sermon as well. Even some of the old Salvation Army hymns are music of old drinking songs but with rewritten Christian words! There were no copy-write laws then and today we know the hymn but we do not have a clue what the original worldly words were! Brass bands still have their respected place in this world and they involve many people at once to praise God in beautiful harmony with a distinct variety of treble and bass harmonies.

7. Here is a problem with music, you can get burnt out on it if it is too repetitive or too frequently sung, or you can feel lost if you cannot join in if it is too new and the words and melody are not familiar. It is hard to have a balance to make everyone happy when it comes to music! But in the end, a praise song, or a hymn is a song for God, so the way I see it is this way, it doesn’t matter if I like the tune or the choice of band instruments playing it, what matters is I must be open to letting it feed my spirit since it is dedicated to God. The old and new are valid!

I am like you, I like certain songs better than others and that is normal as our cultural backgrounds and past experiences influence our tastes. I only have a problem with people who have a problem of being stuck in one style only, being in a rut which is inflexible and selfish pushing for their likes only.

We do not have that problem here in our Corps, but in some churches the fight over styles is tragic! What was intended to unite the body (singing together), has sometimes become the dividing stumbling block because some ultra-young or ultra-old persons do like or want to accept the fact that they should just join in no matter the style and worship in a differently and just be encouraged that God is worshipped and praised.

8. So what are the 2 times we praise God (in song, or in any form of worship)? When we feel like it and when we don’t feel like it! Music for me being an only lonely child growing up was always a good escape and cheap way of entertainment. I use to have the radio on non-stop when the transistor ones came out when I was a kid. I then at age 14 got a reel to reel tape recorded and I recorded off the radio all the hits for several years. I got in my 8 hours of music daily but today music has been replaced by the internet and iphone apps occupying 10 hours of everyone’s time. 

Playing guitar was one of the best pass times ever and I still love it. I got to practice in several bands when young and make new friends that I never would have met otherwise. All my life God has opened many doors through music! I use to play Beatles and gospel songs in all the popular places in Lapaz, Bolivia, and I loved meeting Ambassadors and all kinds of people. When my kids were little, I took them for years to sing with me in rest homes.

But here is something I see as a tragedy, the church should have been able to involve me with Christian music when I was young, but they did not have that offer. The tradition in that church was only to have a pianist and an organ player and no one else could play and only hymns were allowed so this explains why secular music overshadowed praise music for decades! Thank God the Salvation Army offers music attractive to most of the youth and many have escaped the gang life because of being involved in our bands! I’ve heard a few dozen testimonies about this!

Finally in the 1990’s it seems praise music modernized. I thank God that today The Salvation Army offers a variety of praise bands catering to the cultural appetites of the particular audience at hand. I am glad there is an acceptance of other styles and cultures and where else can you see girls in uniforms with tambourines? Sacred dance, spoken word, and all modern styles are accepted if…if they elevate you to worship God! We need to stop the worship of famous Christian performers as they can get corrupted with pride like those of the world do.

9. To conclude, worshipping God is done in many ways but what God expects is for us to not follow a rigid model of music or any system that has been made culturally or traditionally acceptable, but rather do all things so that is generates in us a life of obedience and holiness! And what we do should awaken a love for God and love for our brothers and sisters!

We must seek to love Him and serve Him, this is worship! There is the reality that music is not an instrument that will cause a person to love and obey God more! God feels what we feel and he created us to feel love and waves of euphoria and songs can help but sadly in this fallen world of continual tragic news we can’t always be made happy. And don’t be like someone I knew that after everyone makes great comments about how they felt the Holy Spirit, that the sermon was convicting, that music was uplifting they contrarily comment that everyone and the church is dead because they felt nothing! The obvious is what is dead is their relationship with God!

Songs will usually make us feel good but there are times when not even a song can bring a person consolation, but we keep going anyway and eventually the Holy Spirit takes over if you let Him!  Prayer we might consider to be even more important than praise in song because Jesus taught quite a bit about prayer, but nothing regarding hymns! Jesus gave no instruction on how often or in what style to sing hymns!

10. We conclude that God wants our worship to be sincere and real! He wants our heart, our undivided pure love and holiness to be what motivates. Why sing or do anything if it is fake or heartless or spurns criticism and not doing it in a spirit of truthfulness for the love of God? No one is required to sing, but everyone is required to worship while in the house of God!

John 4: 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

God must not be worshipped only in a certain place (or only in certain churches with popular bands) or worshipped in a certain cultural style pre-programed into our limited minds, He must be worshipped with our hearts, minds, and soul! Real worship implies a life of obedience in love! Worship is not just the repeating of a song or the having a good time in a meeting, worship means loving God and His Word to the point his Holy Spirit takes over! You can overcome any limits your personal preferences dictate; it’s not about you, it’s about God, amen?     

Have You Had A Desert Experience?

Have You Had A Desert Experience?                                                                        Kelly Durant

Luke 4:1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into[a] the wilderness

2. On the way home with our grandkids we had some hours to kill in the car and we were looking for things to do to make the time pass. We found some self discovery psychological tests online and we each did them and had fun talking about it. I thought it would be good if you did one of the tests as well as it is connected to the message today.

Imagine you are walking in a solitary desert all alone and then you come across a cube. (pause) What is it made of? How big is it? Take a mental note. Now you see a ladder. Where is it in relation to the cube? What is it made of? Now you see flowers near the cube. How many are there?  A storm is coming in now. Do you see it near or far, as a danger or as something passing? This is just a piece of the test.

Now let’s find out about it. The desert is your journey in life. The cube is your ego. How big is it? Big or small? What is it made of? And the ladder near or far? It describes how close your relationships are to you. And how many flowers were there? This represents your children, or the number of people you take care of. Your fear of the future is revealed in the danger of the storm. If you are curious my cube was as big as a house made of steel, and the ladder was made of aluminum and it was on the front of the cube so you could go on top, and the whole thing had hundreds of flowers all around it! And I saw the storm far away and not a threat! Strange mental games, right? What were your answers? (See this on my Facebook)

3. Here is a reality, life with God will lead you into the wilderness, or desert at some time in your life! Do you realize how many people had to go into the wilderness because God lead them there? I don’t think any of them really wanted to go because as human beings we always seek comfort. But whether they wanted it or not it was a process that was needed for them to understand the deeper things God needed to teach them so they could be rewarded and broken into a vessel that is useful for God’s service.

Adam and Eve were forced into the wilderness out of the garden. Physically and metaphorically all of humanity is still in the wilderness and not home yet! Then after Adam there is Abraham. At a certain point in his life God spoke to him and told him to travel across unknown places.

Genesis 12: 1 Now the Lord had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country, From your family

And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. 2. I will make you a great nation;

I will bless you, And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.

3. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you;

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

So for God’s purpose and blessings, whether we decide for it or not, may include that you and I will have to move one day! And who was the next person in Genesis to be forced to leave into the wilderness out of the city of Sodom? Sodom was a comfortable prosperous place, but it was full of sin and violence compared to many huge cities today. It was Lot and his family! And then there is another one who had to go into the desert sent away; it was Hagar, who had her son Ishmael. And what about Joseph who is next on this list in Genesis? He was sold into slavery by his brothers and was taken through the desert to Egypt. And after the children’s children of Abraham spent a few hundred years in Egypt how did they escape the idolatry and slavery? God’s man Moses called them out and took them out into the desert!

4. So God’s Word from the beginning describes how his children literally have to move from one place to another, and often move into a desert place for some time for a purpose, and this begs this question, how does this relate to you and me in our life? Can you describe a time in your life in which you felt like you were in a wilderness? A place and time where the heat and survival to live was so intense it was a life changing purge? Or maybe you are feeling that now!

God’s word since the beginning has recorded these personal stories of faith journeys in the wilderness for a reason. It is for each one of us to learn and mature by the life threatening experience because we usually do not do that on our own. We must ‘feel the heat’! Each of us have been, or will have to be in the desert at some point in our life in order to learn what God wants us to learn. Some people go through it young as Joseph, while others go through the desert when they are old, as Moses did.

Sometimes we get frustrated with each other as many people tend to be impatient, rude, prideful, unsympathetic, and unloving and these characteristics are what we saw in Moses and many others before their purging desert experience. The desert purge will change you because you are in a place where you will die if you do not depend on God! The quicker you and I learn the better!

5. So how do we relate the desert wilderness experience to Jesus as in the verse of today? It is interesting to note that even though He was divine, Jesus still had to learn to dominate His human nature and He had to learn that alone battling it out with Satan.

Here is a verse that always troubled me because I always thought, well, if Jesus had to suffer to learn, how much more I must suffer then to learn as well! Hebrews 5:8 though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. I always pray, “Lord make me a quick learner of your will!”

The basics of this experience that Jesus had was to allow Him to go through all the situations and temptations that all of us must go through which are temptations to seek for bread alone, (implying the selfish desire for survival or seeking this world’s goods only) forgetting to worship God the provider who provides in His time. Next is the temptation to gain power and riches which Satan can grant by worshipping Him but you lose your soul in rebellion and to hell in the process. And finally the temptation to test God to show off is spiritual pride. Apart from life’s tests add in feelings of extreme discomfort when the heat is on and these include hunger, thirst, loneliness, anger, and depression.    

6. When I was a young radical passionate Christian I always had in the back of my mind that I too should get away and fast for 30 days as Jesus did in order to connect with God. I always wanted to be just alone with God but I never really got the chance as Jesus did it. I have fasted a few days at a time though.

And then one day God seemed to speak to me in that still small voice that I was not Jesus, so why should I want to copy Him in everything? My life and yours may be on God’s path but it would be spiritual pride to copy Jesus exactly if imitating Him is just to show off we can be exactly like Him. But we never will be as holy, as strong, as loving as He was! But we do need to do our best!  I think you might be pretty sick after 30 days of no food! And traumatized as well from the isolation, heat, and mind games!

We do seek to imitate Jesus in our lives and I have seen miracles after praying for others, but no one of us can ever be on the deserved respectable level of Jesus in His passionate dedication to God’s will. But we try! We obey to be holy as He is holy! But here is what God showed me then, it was almost as if He said, (in my thoughts) don’t seek a desert, your desert will come, but not the one you imagine, but one I will show you. In other words the purging, the maturing, the time of feeling all alone and having to only depend on God alone will happen but it will happen in God’s time but in the time and place where God will take you.

7. But what do we learn from Jesus? He was called to a mission from God, got baptized as a symbol of His start down that path of mission. And then the heavens opened for all to see that the Holy Spirit would dwell with Him and all of us, and at that moment the Holy Spirit was leading Jesus.

Luke 4:1 Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. This was the path God had for Him and God has a distinct destiny for everyone, but you have to be sure that it is His Holy Spirit guiding you. How do you know? Believe me, you will know!

When I was called as a young man to serve God I was a confused mess wanting to escape this world after learning about all the hell and injustices that exist with hellish people and wars dominating this world. But after I decided to serve and follow Jesus I suddenly felt peace, joy, love and an unexplainable desire to help others and to give them what I had found, which was a new start in life with Jesus in the center of everything!

8. So while serving Jesus the desert in my life came after about 1 ½ year later of serving Him. The first 6 months I was in the clouds with Jesus. The next 6 months after that in Brazil the people were amazingly receptive to the gospel and I loved life. But then after that there were days in Bolivia in Lapaz where there are closed cold hearts that I literally cried day after day for a few months out of frustration that no one would convert to serve Jesus full time. Everyday I would pass out gospel tracts and pray with someone the sinner’s prayer but no one wanted to forsake all their miserable life, poor possessions, and shallow life to follow Jesus. I felt like all my labor was in vain and that I was alone in my fight but I was not going to quit! 

I often felt stupid inside trying love people who would not respond. I felt like a fool and then I read in my Bible that that was exactly what Paul felt as well. 1 Corinthians 4:10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored!

This is only one of the mini-deserts I have had to cross. But a few years later going back to Lapaz for 3 years I had a better experience. There are moments in our lives that we will feel like we are lost and spinning our wheels, walking in circles in the desert as the Israelites did with Moses because they were not mature and ready for the promised land. I prayed, “God get be out of here, change me totally to be what you need me to be!”

9. In our study of holiness you will recall Samuel Brengle, the Salvation Army theologian who wrote more than a dozen books on holiness, and how did he gain so much insight into God’s nature and change into God’s man? He went through several long and trying deserts. For one he was very well educated when he came to The Salvation Army as a young man but the founder, William Booth, chose to put him in charge of shining the hundreds of shoes of all the Officers that went out preaching in the muddy streets of London.

He must have felt humiliated, confused, and angry, but he was not going to quit, he remained faithful and took it like a test that he was going to pass and after months of being a nobody, God was preparing to use him as a great somebody. But later, after passing through the purge of Cadet training while in one of his appointments do you recall what tragedy happened to him next? An evil person who did not like street preachers dropped a brick on his head from a tall building!

That injury almost killed him and sent him to the hospital for more than a year and half! Did he ever doubt and tell God that he was finished because serving him only got him into situations of suffering? No! He used his time alone in that hospital bed to write about how to live in God’s perfect love and holiness. His insight and writings live on, and his life was changed into something supernatural forever after that.  

10. So what desert have you been through? The desert is not always a physical one but it is a spiritual one, it is a time when you are tempted and tried, a time when everything around you seems meaningless and is just sand, uncomfortableness and nothing.

Here is something I know, the desert is not forever for the Christian! The desert for Jesus was for 30 days and the desert for some may be for much longer, even years. In the case of the rebellious Israelites under Moses it lasted a lifetime but most of us are not that rebellious! When you feel a trying time coming with loneliness and overwhelming heat, it is time to seek God as never before! Today the Holy Spirit talks to us to teach us about where to be in God’s will but we must ask God to mold us and remake us as we with discomfort learn to listen and obey His Word.    

The sad reality is many people in this world, even some Christians are too preprogramed by the culture and system have and have opted for the bread of materialism instead of faith, this world’s power positions instead of God’s future kingdom, and they tempt God by acting invincible with over confidence that God will just do for them all of what they desire. I wish that everyone would have a wilderness experience so they could turn their entire life around and be close to God! That is our goal… holiness, intimacy, and love dominating our lives and love for our amazing Savior who proved victory over evil is possible!