When You Feel You Are in a Spiritual Desertናሙና

When You Feel You're in the Desert

The following passage in Deuteronomy 8:2-5 is one of the best descriptions of what it means to be in the wilderness. Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments. He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothing did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

There is a desert for each of us. There was a wilderness even for Jesus, the Son of God (Matt.4:1-11). Only then did his public ministry begin, and he said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near (Matt.4:17). Desert times are inevitable for every person who desires God to use them and who knows God has called them. We don't end up in the desert by accident; God takes us there himself. It was the Holy Spirit who took Jesus to the wilderness. If we want to walk with God, it means we will have to walk with Him into the wilderness. Israel had to learn that if they wanted God to stay with them, they would have to live with Him in the wilderness.

And God himself chooses which desert.