NAVIGATING THROUGH THE WILDERNESS

Have you spent periods of time, some short, some long, or maybe in between, when it seemed as if you were traveling though the dark nights of your soul. Maybe even a time where your identity and self worth seem to come under direct assault. At the risk of vulnerability, I must confess to finding myself wandering through that wilderness recently. Those moments were marked by depression and maybe even an underlying anger toward the Lord for even allowing me to go through such emotional torment. What is going on, God? Why is this happening to me? This doesn’t make any sense! But, the wilderness time just continued, dragging me through anger and then to apathy. Soon I was knocking on the door of sadness until I could no longer move. My frustration became so intense that I didn’t know how to navigate out of the darkness…I couldn’t even pray. Have you ever been to the point where you can’t even utter a word…you don’t know what to pray?

I am thankful God blessed me with a loving caring wife who knows me better than I know myself and is not afraid to reach out for help when she sees I am struggling in the wilderness. She quickly called on a great friend with whom the Lord has blessed me, who quietly came alongside me, and with a simple phone call, he gently helped guide me back on track again. The burden became clearer and not so distorted, the frustration (though still present) became a target for action, and I was able to refocus my energy. And now, I’m beginning to feel like maybe I can identify a some of the truths revealed to me over the course of that painful crawl through the wilderness.

Somewhere in the midst of all my crying, and frustration, and yelling at the Lord, I began to realize that He’s not really impressed nor even swayed by my fit throwing. It seems that as so often the case, most of my overly dramatic cries for help were actually my attempt to get the Lord to do what I thought He should do. And, of course, that demand would not be complete if it didn’t include the desire that I wanted Him to do them in the time frame that I thought He should. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that God really does have “all the time in the world” to accomplish His plans and purposes. So, for us to require the Lord to respond to our “more important than anything” requests, or even to fulfill His promises in our time frame…well, it just doesn’t work out that way. When I surrendered to His Lordship, part of what that meant was that would be trusting not only that He’ll get it done, but that it will happen when He’s ready for it to and not a moment sooner,… no matter how much I complain, or whine, or “beseech” Him (I love that word…I need to use it more) to do otherwise.

Another thing I learned about navigating through the wilderness was staying focused on the right things. Paul encouraged the early church saying…“Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable … if anything is excellent or praiseworthy…think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8) One of the enemy’s oldest tactics is to rob us of our enjoyment of life by simply reminding us of what’s not right. If he can get us to spend our days dwelling on what’s not right about ourselves, or our situation, or that person who makes our skin crawl,… then he has succeeded in getting our minds out of focus on those things that are… “true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable … excellent or praiseworthy.” Magnifying the negatives and minimizing the positives of our realities, whether past or present, will inevitably suck the joy out of us and leave us depressed.

This principle is particularly true when applied to our relationship with the Lord. If our prayers are focused on what He hasn’t done for me lately, rather than what He has,… then we’ll slowly be convinced that He surely can’t love me the way I once thought He did. That deception can literally can ruin your faith, and, spoil your life. Thanks to a lot of time in prayer and inner searching, I have developed a stronger inner resolve to focus on the goodness of God, and what He has done, and is still doing in me and for me.

You know, if we’re going to spend eternity in the WITH-GOD life…we must first take ownership that we are saved, redeemed, justified, adopted, deeply loved, and accepted just as we are. We serve a GOOD GOD who wants nothing more than to bless us just because we are His children. He is indeed true, noble, right, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of our praise! If we choose to believe anything other than that,… regardless of how miserable our situation may seem in the moment,… then we are walking in the foolishness and deception of the enemy of our soul. We cannot allow our flesh and our struggle with our own human weakness to twist and distort our heavenly perspective.

I think the discipline of focusing begins with a decision to simply “think about” the “right” things. And, we will stay rightly focused as we learn to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

Lord Jesus, help us to get this one right. We know You are good. We know You love us. Forgive us for our impatience. You want to bless us and surround our lives with your mercy and favor. You have provided for us, you have protected us, you brought us out of the darkness and into the light and we give you our praise. We worship you because you are worthy! Thank you Jesus, we love you. Help us to stay rightly focused today. Amen.