A Way In The Wildernessنموونە

The Way In The Wilderness

Over the past 13 days, we have experienced the wilderness through the lenses of several characters from the bible. For our last day together, I thought it would be good to get personal. My name is Kevin and I am the Lead Pastor of Collective.

I consider myself a positive person. I am a dreamer and I get excited about the future - exploring new territories and diving head first into uncharted waters. However, some years back there was a long period of time where these were taken away from me by a series of uncertainties in my life. I came to fully understand what “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” meant in Proverbs 13:12.

I faced a series of uncertainties, which caused my confidence to slowly ebb away. It did not happen overnight, but little by little, these uncertainties ate at my soul. I fell into severe anxiety and began to lose sleep. I could only manage to get about an hour of sleep a night. Not knowing what to do, I started taking sleeping pills and from then on everything spiraled downwards.

It became very difficult for me as I had to put up a strong front to lead the church and act as though everything was alright. One of my scariest moments was when my memory became fragmented. I could not connect the sequences of many events correctly. I prayed and asked God for a breakthrough, but nothing happened.

Then one day, God spoke to me through one of the entries in an online forum. I was encouraged to focus on God and not my problems, I and invited the Holy Spirit to come and fill me once again. From that moment onwards, I prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill me every night. At first, it was tough to fall asleep without the pills, but thankfully, I experienced gradual healing from God.

Being the senior pastor, it was inevitable that my personal wilderness would eventually spill over and affect the church. We lost a lot of momentum and became inward looking due to the instability, lack of discipleship and changes in leadership. 

I desperately needed a solution, a new game plan, but I was looking for answers in the wrong places.

The answer was written plainly in Isaiah 43 - that my focus should not be on “the new thing” or “the way in the wilderness”, but on the “I AM” - the God who is gracious, compassionate, forgiving and abounding in love!

I hope the journey over the past 14 days has reaffirmed your identity in Christ and helped you discover not just a way out of your wilderness, but the Way-Maker Himself.

Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV) - You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Congratulations for completing A Way In The Wilderness. We hope you found it helpful. 

To find out more about Collective, connect with us at collective.my/connect.