SurvivorMan
Pt. 4
I. Introduction
We have been talking about how to survive the dry times for three weeks. I hope I haven’t preached you into a dry time during this. What I do hope is that you have learned the lessons necessary to make it through the dry times productively. I know some of you have heard these over and over, but for those of you who have missed a week let me quickly restate the lessons before we move on. These lessons are about learning from the wilderness:
Survival Lesson 1: Wilderness is not a location. It is a condition.
Survival Lesson 2: Wilderness is common to everyone.
Survival Lesson 3: If you stay in the wilderness too long you will die there.
Survival Lesson 4: The wilderness keeps our desires from outrunning our development.
Survival Lesson 5: The wilderness teaches us how to truly worship.
Survival Lesson 6: To survive the wilderness you must know where to hide.
Survival Lesson 7: You will receive offers you are expected to refuse.
Survival Lesson 8: The wilderness will produce offspring in you.
Survival Lesson 9: Bitter ain’t bad.
Those are the lessons you must learn. However, today I want us to look a the top 10 survival tips which are more about how to live or make it during the wilderness moments than they are about learning from the wilderness moments.
What does a wilderness moment look like or sound like? David may have the corner on the market of expressing the wilderness experience. Have you ever felt like this?
Psalms 22:14-19
14I’m a bucket kicked over and spilled,
every joint in my body has been pulled apart.
My heart is a blob
of melted wax in my gut.
15I’m dry as a bone,
my tongue black and swollen.
They have laid me out for burial
in the dirt.
16Now packs of wild dogs come at me;
thugs gang up on me.
They pin me down hand and foot,
17and lock me in a cage—a bag
Of bones in a cage, stared at
by every passerby.
18They take my wallet and the shirt off my back,
and then throw dice for my clothes.
19You, GOD—don’t put off my rescue!
Hurry and help me!
David understood the desert. There will be days, weeks, perhaps even months when you will feel this way. It is normal, but you must do your part to survive during those moments so that you won’t give up. So let’s look at the Top 10 Survival Tips.
III. Survival Tips
Tip #10: Be Prepared
No more excuses for not being prepared. Don’t act surprised or be totally bent out of shape when you end up in a dry time. Why? Because you have been warned that it will happen. So prepare for it. How do you do that? Keep the notes you have taken during this series handy. So that when you enter a dry season you will know what to look for and watch for. You remember the old adage, “if you fail to plan you plan to fail”? This holds true in regards to wilderness times. If you fail to plan for the wilderness times when they come you will fail and fall into depression, bitterness, anger and you will want to give up or make stupid decisions. Say this with me, “I will have a dry season . . . so I better prepare for it.”
Tip #9: Let someone know where you are
One of the common mistakes I see as people are going through dry seasons is that they never let anyone know where they are. They suffer in silence because we are afraid people will judge us as unspiritual if we are dry. Remember I said position/prominence won’t keep you out of the wilderness. It is common to everyone. You are no less spiritual than the next person just because you are dry. However, we must learn to be honest about our condition and quit faking the smile and the dance. We should signal trusted folks that we need prayer, counsel, guarding. This is why you have seen spiritual giants fall. They wouldn’t let anyone know that they were dry. Signal someone! Let them watch for you. The saddest portion of Scripture in the whole Bible is where David says in Psalms 142 – no man cared or watched for my soul. We can’t read your mind and sometimes we can’t read your heart. Signal someone.
Tip #8: Find Shelter
You will remember that we talked about knowing where to hide. This ties into that, but I want to make just a little different statement here. If you watch any survival show on TV one of the most crucial elements for them to be able to endure the wilderness is shelter. They have to have protection against the elements. The same is true for you in your spiritual walk. During a dry season you must have shelter. That is why it is so crucial to be a part of a local church. These are the people who you can signal and who can wrap arms around you and shelter you. We are supposed to have each other’s back! I mention this because it seems to me that most of the people I know who are going through dry times want to pull back from church. Instead we shouldn’t forsake the assembling together we should run to each other for shelter, love, encouragement. People should be able to walk into this place discouraged, find courage and leave encouraged. Don’t let the dry times cause you to be exposed. Look at your neighbor and say I will be a shelter for you. I’ve got your back!
Tip #7: Don’t Panic
I simply want to make this statement to you. If you are dry. Don’t freak out. Don’t panic. You should have known it was coming. You shouldn’t have been surprised. So don’t panic. During this season quit listening to the 70’s classic song “Freak Out.” If you make a wrong move in the wilderness it can kill you. Don’t panic. Keep a level head. Don’t do something stupid! Don’t make life wrecking decisions or choices. Don’t panic! Take a deep breath and live through it. Your favorite verse of Scripture during a dry season should be this too shall pass!
Tip #6: Get Rid of the Non-Essentials
When you are in a dry time you have to simplify your life. The reason some of our dry times are so extended is because we fail to get rid of the non-essentials in our lives and they weigh us down and keep us dry. During dry times you have to evaluate what is important and what isn’t. During a dry time your schedule may need to slow down a bit or that busy schedule that you used to be able to handle could deplete you to the point that you can’t recover. During the dry time there may relationships that need to be cut off, suspended, or avoided because they drain you more than they help you. You must focus on what is essential. What is important? What do I need to survive? Everything else has to be dismissed until you are fresh enough to handle it. That means you may have to go to your spouse and ask for help in the schedule. That means you may have to go to a trusted friend and ask them to run interference for you in other relationships. That may mean you have to stay off the phone, turn off the TV, or shut down the computer. Get rid of everything that doesn’t assist in moving you through the dry times. If it keeps you dry or increases your dryness dispose of it. Tell your neighbor, “You will have to get rid of some stuff!”
Tip #5: Be familiar with your survival manual
A good survival manual is worth its weight in gold. In fact, on Survivorman’s website he tells you that one of the key pieces of a survival kit is a good survival manual. This manual teaches you tricks to survive and gives you knowledge to live on. You need that kind of a manual to survive the dry times. The good news is you have one. It is called the Bible. This is your survival manual and you should be familiar with it. I didn’t say you should listen to it as your pastor reads it or that you should watch your spouse read it. I said you should be familiar with it personally. How can you defeat the enemy if you don’t know the Word? How can you see to walk if you have no light for your path? How can you live off of every Word that God speaks if you aren’t reading that Word? We perish for the lack of knowledge. That is the reason we have been given a book full of knowledge to help us make it through the dry times. Believe it or not you will find useful information in this book. Get a version you understand!
For instance, if you are dry and you want to be refreshed this book tells you how to be refreshed.
Isaiah 58:9b-11
“If you get rid of unfair practices,
quit blaming victims,
quit gossiping about other people’s sins,
10If you are generous with the hungry
and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out,
Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness,
your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
11I will always show you where to go.
I’ll give you a full life in the emptiest of places—
firm muscles, strong bones.
You’ll be like a well-watered garden,
a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
Did you hear it? These are the survival steps you take to get refreshed – you quit blaming everyone else, you quit pointing fingers at everyone’s sins, you give to the hungry, down and out and out of that you will be refreshed. You must be familiar with His Word to survive.
Tip #4: Learn the lessons while in the wilderness
What happens if you flunk 8th grade? You have to go back and do it again. The whole reason I took 3 weeks to teach you 9 lessons about the wilderness is because if you don’t learn those lessons while you are in the wilderness you will be sent back. You will have to repeat the experience. I see so many people that go through a dry season and never learn anything from it and so before you know it they are dry again. They are on the wilderness carousel and can’t seem to get off. You can set your calendar by them. You just know that at a certain time each year they are going to be dry. I had a lady in my ministry several years ago that was like this. She would do great for a while and then about every 5th or 6th month you just knew the depression was coming, the dryness, the pettiness, the turmoil was coming. Why? Because she was just trying to endure the dry time and never took enough initiative to learn the lessons the wilderness was trying to teach her. So since she flunked she kept getting sent back. Learn the lessons. There will be times you learn one set of lessons and graduate out of the wilderness. You may then go back to a dry season to learn new lessons, but don’t go back and have to spend the time relearning the same lessons over and over again.
Tell your neighbor, “It is time to pass the test and graduate!”
Tip #3: Find food and water
Too many folks when in the wilderness seem to avoid the very source of their food and water. Read more, praise more, and attend more. May have to look to unused or untapped sources. He may lead you to a brook. Survival manual was about you reading. This is about you reading others, listening to others, digging for food. Search high and low for food and water. Just getting food and water at church won’t cut it. During the dry times your cd player, radio station, iPod, TV, bookshelf should all come into play. You should constantly be reading, listening, and watching sources of food and water or you will perish. In the dry times you will need more nourishment than normal.
Tip #2: Use magnification to start a fire
During dry times we must use magnification to start a fire. You have seen them do this. They use a piece of glass or a shiny can. But what am I talking about spiritually? If you are dry, begin to magnify God. How can you magnify something that is already so big? Magnifying God isn’t so much about making God bigger as it is about making our perspective of God bigger. It is during the dry times that we need to remind ourselves of just how big God is. That is why Moses’ told the Children of Israel over 18 times in Deuteronomy to “remember what God has done.” He was telling them to magnify God. That is why David in Psalm 34 says, “O magnify the Lord with me.” They knew that if we magnify God it will create a fire in us!
The two and three year old children sat quietly, mesmerized as they listened to their teacher with rapt attention. O.K., let’s be honest, they probably weren’t sitting quietly or mesmerized. But evidently they were listening as the teacher told the story of Elijah’s request to the widow to fix him a meal. The response comes back to the prophet, “I am fixing my last meal for my sons and myself. We will eat it and die.” Elijah persists and tells the widow not to fear and then he promises that the oil in the widow’s jar will not dry up until after the famine has ended. The widow obeyed and the oil ran freely for the next three years. The teacher asked the children questions about what they had learned from the story. She asked a blonde haired, blue eyed, brilliant little three year old (if you haven’t guessed, this is my son!) why the widow should not have been afraid to give her last meal to the prophet. Without hesitation, according to the note we received from his teacher, Devin simply stated, “Because God is bigger!” A simple childlike answer with a profound message for those of us dry times.
At times our jar of oil will run low. But God is bigger. During the dry times, God is bigger. During the hard times and in spite of the struggles, God is bigger. There is no need to fear or dread. There is no need to think about quitting because God is bigger. Magnify Him and fire begins! Because when I think about His goodness and what He’s done for me it makes me want to shout! How do you make a huge God bigger? Magnify Him! Let the fire start.
Tip #1: Develop a survival plan
The reason that SurvivorMan can do what he does is because he has a carefully laid out plan. In fact, he works for months to get ready for 7 days. He has a plan of travel, he has a plan of escape, and he has a plan of supplies. It is all planned out.
Too many of us just go through the dry times haphazardly with no plan. Make a survival plan. Your homework this week is to sit down and come up with a plan for what you will do when you go through a spiritual dry time. It could be something like this:
During my next dry season I will:
1. Read Psalms daily
2. I will purposely touch base with an accountability partner daily
3. I will not miss church during this time for anything.
4. I will get involved in an outreach opportunity like feeding the hungry
5. I will ride in my car with no music, radio, or talk on the cell so that the solitude that I need will work its purpose in my life.
6. I will fast TV during this time.
You make your plan. But have a plan. Don’t just stumble into the dry times with no idea of what you will do. That is a recipe for disaster. From SurvivorMan’s website I pulled this quote, “Survivors keep their wits about them, they believe that they will survive and they decide on a plan of survival and see it through.”
You can survive! In fact, I want you to say this as we close this series this morning, “I will survive!”
