08/21/2024
The wilderness is a metaphor we all use to describe those seasons of hurt, pain, loneliness, and uncertainty. We can think of the “wilderness wanderings” of the Israelites, the time Moses fled to the wilderness after murdering an Egyptian, or the wilderness experience of Elijah when he felt he was the only prophet left in Israel.
Are you in a wilderness right now?
As I write this, I’m thinking of a friend who is scheduled to have open-heart surgery. My mind goes to another friend who was just told he has terminal cancer. I read an email yesterday concerning a wife who has an abusive husband and is seeking help. Without question, these are wilderness moments.
But is it possible that those places of great struggle can lead to great encounter? Corey Russell writes that “throughout the Bible we see that God chooses again and again to form His people in the wilderness. It is the furnace of transformation. The place where our facades, illusions, fantasies, and props are removed, and we come face-to-face with our nothingness. In the wilderness, God strips us of our independence and rebellion and teaches us to depend on Him” (Ancient Paths, 132).
When Moses was deep in the wilderness, he encountered the burning bush depicting the presence of God. God commanded Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). Mark Sayers writes, “The presence of God turns the hard ground into holy ground” (A Non-Anxious Presence, 180).
Even though we would rather be up on the mountaintop of sunshine, blue skies, and cool breezes, God often shapes us in the valley of darkness. In the wilderness, we face the pressure that refines. God uses pressure to grow us in our wilderness moments, just like pressure is needed to create diamonds out of simple carbon.
Diamonds don’t begin as diamonds. They initially start as common, ordinary carbon. But this carbon is transformed into something rare, incredible, and nearly invincible. How? Through pressure. Hundreds of miles below the earth’s surface, the process of transformation begins. Diamonds are made in hiddenness.
Likewise, our spiritual transformation is forged in the pressure we face in the wilderness, in the hiddenness of life. I keep a quote on my desk that says, “Some think you become great on the big stage under the bright lights. But the light only reveals the work you did in the dark” (Jeff Bajenaru).
If you’re in a wilderness right now, prayerfully consider that this may be an opportunity for God to turn the hard ground into holy ground. Allow this season of darkness to be the work of the Spirit pressing you, forging you through the furnace of transformation. May the hiddenness of this moment not lead to isolation but to the presence of God who will one day call you out of your wilderness wandering into the land of hope.
“Therefore, I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak
tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards and will make the
Valley of Achor a door of hope” (Hosea 2:14-15, NIV).
