Life in the Desert

This past Sunday I preached a sermon at Set Free about "Life in the Desert," essentially explaining how to cope with times of difficulty and spiritual frustration and the feeling that God is very distant. If you've read my past few blogs, I'm sure you can see how appropriate that is for my season of life.

So for those of you who feel like you're wandering around in circles, getting nowhere, and "chasing the wind," I'll give you the abbreviated version of my sermon (which clocked in at a cool 25 minutes!)

First, times in the desert are a necessity. Every person has gone, or will go, through these times. All the big shots in the Bible went through it: Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Paul, and even some littler shots like Philip the evangelist. There are many different reasons people have to go through the desert: tempting, testing, punishment, a personal God-encounter, escape, training, and to minister to other desert dwellers. The key is to endure the time, while not doing anything to keep you there longer.

Second, in the desert, regardless of why you are there, you will face temptation. Either the temptation to "go back to Egypt," or the temptation to stay and do things like God's not watching. Our reactions to these can either be like the Israelites in the desert, who grumbled, complained, and rebelled. Or you can react like Jesus, who stood up and faced his temptation by quoting some basic commands of scripture to his adversary.

Third, it is important to keep the focus on God's provision during desert times, because this is where the biggest miracles happen. Yet these big miracles are often not a daily occurrance; it is, rather, the one-day-at-a-time provision direct from the hand of God. When you start to focus on what you don't have, you are on your way to failure. The keys are to keep praying for everything you need, regardless of what it is, and to be thankful for what you get.

Finally, the result of the successful navigation of the desert times is abundant blessing--the promised land! Unfortunately, these blessings can take many forms, which may make them hard to recognize. Ultimately, our entire life on earth could probably be classified as a desert existence, meeting with various oases between the drier times. So any blessings we get down here are only a transitory foreshadowing of the glorious riches that God has in store for us through the provision of Jesus Christ.

So there you have it. And if you're currently in the desert, I find that ice cream really helps take the edge off!