The Wilderness Experience
Matthew 26:69-75
When Jesus finished sharing the Passover with the disciples, he took Peter, James and John with him to the Garden of Gethsemane. The Gospels describe Jesus as “sorrowful and troubled.”
The Gospel of John in chapter 21 reports that Jesus appeared to the disciples as they were fishing
In the Bible, the wilderness was both a geographic place, barren and harsh, and a metaphor for those times when life is difficult and filled with adversity. Wilderness experiences are seasons of loss, opposition, betrayal, abandonment, despair or failure
The question isn’t if you are going to have a wilderness experience in your life but rather
1. How will you respond?
2. What will you receive and learn from it?
Wilderness experiences will either push you away from God or draw you closer to God. It’s there that we can experience God’s presence
If we let them, wilderness experiences can be a rich time of personal and spiritual growth in both our understanding of God and ourselves. It’s not that God causes wilderness experiences, often they’re the result of
The Wilderness Experience
1. God is more concerned with our character than our comfort
2. Growth takes place in tension
Like going to the gym to lift weights and cause growth in our muscles, the wilderness experience can cause tension in our lives and circumstances which can lead to change and growth. They can become a catalyst for change. What we find is that if there’s not an intense catalyst
God doesn’t cause pain but can use the pain of the wilderness experience to challenge and change us to become…cross
3. God allows us to work through the wilderness
Most of the time, we would rather avoid the wilderness experience. We call on God to remove us. We try everything we can to go around it, avoid it and sometimes even simply ignore it rather than experience it. But the wilderness still remains and must be dealt with. God doesn’t remove
the Apostle Paul’s experience where in 2 Corinthians 11:24 he writes about his sufferings which included beatings, being stoned with rocks, being shipwrecked, in danger from rivers, bandits, fellow Jews, and Gentile. sleep deprivation, hunger and being cold and naked. And on top of that he says, “I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor. 12:9-10
Causes of the Wilderness Experience
1. Personal crisis
which is usually the result of sin in our lives and causes us to re-evaluate our life. Your life isn’t over, but you begin to feel the pain of your sin, its impact and begin to see the errors of your ways. Yet, the truth is that a personal crisis
2. Relational crisis
We are lied to, hurt or betrayed by someone closest to us, sometimes we even think it might be God. The reality is that we are often wounded the deepest by those closest to us. But a relational crisis can also occur when God often uses a friend
Nathan and David and Bathsheba
This is our responsibility to other for Galatians 6:1 says, “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” There comes a time when it takes confrontation to help a person
3. Circumstances crisis
There may be a looming catastrophe when the bottom is about to fall out of your life. Alcoholics Anonymous calls this “hitting rock bottom.” You’re at the end of your rope, the pain of your ways is too great and you are about to lose it all
“You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you, there is more of God.” Matthew 5:3 The Message translation
Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich in their book, “The Critical Journey” calls this “The Wall.” Others have called it the “dark night of the soul.” This is a time when we are confronted with who we are and what we have done or what others have done to us. In the midst of the wilderness, so often, our response is either to become a victim
But it’s in the wilderness that we are forced to wrestle with whether we are willing to surrender to God and let Him direct our lives. This was Paul’s lesson learned in His wilderness, “when I am weak, then I am strong
Hagberg and Guelich idenitfy Four Phases of the Wilderness Exper
1. Self-awareness
It is in the wilderness that we have to come to grips with who we are and what we have done. God brings a renewed sense of self-awareness and the parts of us that need healing and transformation. It means realizing who we really are as opposed to
Frequently, anger, bitterness and sadness accompany these insights. God begins that healing as we come before Him and begin to follow His agenda. Many times in the wilderness, something has to be given up
This is where healing begin. We are not left in the darkness or the pain
The wilderness is a time when we are confronted by the disparity between who we are and who God calls us to be, between how we live and how God is calling us to live. In the wilderness, we come to realize we have been living as we want and in our own strengths and will. And so when we encounter God, we see ourselves as we really are and the denial
This can be a frightening and yet pivotal moment as we feel drawn to surrender, and yet still want to have control. It is not easy and in fact, may even be the most pain filled experience of our lives as we die to ourselves
It is at this moment that we have to choose to let God be God and to surrender our lives to His will or continue living in denial as we are. When we choose God, we are healed
We become open to considering anything that God brings before us. We suspend judgment, analyzing and reverting to the tried and true. It means taking a risk and really listening to God in new ways. Thus, we must set aside time for solitude
2. Forgiveness
We not only need to forgive ourselves but also give and receive forgiveness from others. It’s also here that we receive God’s grace
3. Acceptance
This doesn’t come easily for us. Acceptance means looking at ourselves impartially and accepting not only who we are but who others are as well. It means embracing the clown in us, the devil in us, the frightened child in us, the wicked witch in us, the lonely lover in us, the intellectual snob in us, the overacheiever in us, the attention seeker in us, the insecure boy or girl in us, the addicted one in us, the perfectionist in us. If we don’t, then they control us.
We must continually and humbly ask for God’s forgiveness and acceptance so that healing may come and we can accept
4. Love. for ourselves, for others and for God. This leads us to love others, even when they have hurt us. We can honestly pray for them
The wilderness can lead us to experience God in a new a different way. Even when we feel alone and that God is absent, there is a sense of being “kept” on the journey. Though we may feel naked, defenseless and vulnerable, it is because of this that we sense God’s love and presence in a new way. There is more of us available to Him
And it is through all of this that we experience the words of the hymn, “Spirit of the Living God, “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me, melt me, mold me, move me, use me, Spirit of the Living God.” It is here that we can become like surrendered clay
And thus, as painful as the wilderness can be, it an be an immense blessing in our life and a watershed event in our spiritual journey. Amen
