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!