The Sufficiency and Supply of God in the Wilderness

(Deuteronomy 8, Moses and the Children of Israel)
The Power of Desperation, Michael Catt.

• "The grace, the groans and the glory are all part of the eternal purpose. Where there is no groaning, there is no growing now, nor glory to come." - Vance Havner
  
  
• The thought of God taking forty years to work something in us - and out of us - is frightening. Especially in our American Christianity mindset of immediate success and power.
  
  
• What might the books of the real heroes of the Bible be entitled?
  Job - "Serving God when there's nothing left."
  Moses - "How to go from the palace to the desert in one fateful decision."
  Noah - "Don't build a boat where there's no water, unless you are willing to be the brunt of the world's jokes."
  
  
• "The Wilderness is an experience of contrasts. It is an unsettled, barren, perilous area, but it is also a place where God is! It is a difficult, lonely, unnerving site, but it is also a place where God dwells! It is a draining, exhausting, discouraging situation, but it is also a place where God heals and strengthens! It is a removed, desolate, debilitating condition, but it is also a place where God moves and loves!" - Rob Bailey
  
  
• God puts us in the wilderness until we want the Promised Land enough to fight for it.
  
  
• The wilderness is NEVER wasted time.
  
  
• The wilderness is a time when you can make a choice: I'm going to live through this and thrive in the wilderness, or I'm going to curl up in the fetal position and just wait to die.
  
  
• Moses got a B.N. degree (Be Nothing) in the seminary of suffering and sheepherding. Faith works best when there is no natural hope. God speaks best when all other voices are silenced.
  
  
• "Remember is is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. The greater the difficulty, the easier for faith; as long as there remains certain natural prospects, faith does not get on as easily." - George Mueller
  
  
• Our strengths are no help to God, and our weaknesses are no hindrance to Him.
  
  
• God is not looking for a rededication of your life. God is looking for admission, confession, surrender, and obedience. What He wants is not rededication of our flesh to be better. He wants repentance from the sin that so easily besets us. We should ask God to put a thorn in every pleasure and a worm in every desire that would prevent us from being wholly committed to the Lordship of Christ.
  

Additional scriptures to read: Psalms 119; Jeremiah 17; Romans 7; Psalms 63 (1 Samuel 15-19); Psalms 84; Psalms 143; Matthew 5.

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Even if God were to intervene this very minute and deliver me, fulfill my desire... it would not be the end. Other troubles just as pressing, likely more pressing, will come. I desire to grow in Christ, and growth comes through trial, groaning, and necessity of faith. If I am to forever chase God, then I am to forever be tried. I must learn to bring joy with me to the wilderness and be sustained - to thrive in the desert - by God's presence alone.

The Way Up is Down

Tonight I am beginning the book: The Power of Desperation by Michael Catt. Why? One, because I was sitting at my desk when my spirit suddenly said, "Hey Craig, go read that book you've had on your shelf for over a year," and two, because my heart yearns for love and my spirit cries out for more of God and His power. I want [to learn] to be desperate and broken, completely weak and surrendered, while still holding unwaveringly to faith in God's deliverance. I don't know how to do that, but God will not ignore a cry for wisdom. The Joy of the Lord is my strength.

I'm making notes in my prayer journal as I read a chapter each day. I will post some of the more meaningful ones here, most likely without personal comment. They speak for themselves.

Chapter One - The Way Up is Down (Genesis 32-35, Jacob)

• "God cannot bless us until He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him." - C. S. Lewis
  
  
• You are wallowing in defeat because you keep trying harder instead of trusting completely.
  
  
• "I want to be the person he can turn to and know he is loved unconditionally. I don't approve of what he's done. I don't applaud it. But someone has to love him, and it might as well be me."
  
  
• We will never be desperate for God if we blame our environment, our education or lack thereof, our surroundings, our parents, or our circumstances. We will never be desperate until we face our own depravity. Sin deceives us into thinking we can negotiate with God. It deludes us into thinking we can get better in our flesh. It destroys us by telling us we can get to heaven but avoid a face-to-face encounter with the Christ who demands our whole life surrendered to Him.
  
  
• The blessing can't come without the wrestling. If there is no willingness to yield, there will never be willingness for God to rule.
  
  
• Jacob, like many of us, knew the promise of the blessing, but he couldn't see how God was going to do it. He was impatient with God's timetable. He must have been convinced the promise was conditional based on something he could do, rather than unconditional based on the wisdom, grace, and love of God.
  
  
• Jacob's actions reveal his inability to trust God with his life. He fell back into his old thought patterns.
  
  
• God wrestles with us for two reasons: to get us to admit our deception, and to reveal what we can be when we are desperate for Him as our source of sufficiency.
  

A Bored vs. Meaningful Life

I have a family member who loves to work in his large vegetable and flower garden. He talks about needing "garden time." I would say that is his "therapy." Working, laboring, for a purpose can bring great inner satisfaction. To work on a job worth doing is to achieve a job well done. Just the sheer physicality of hard work produces job satisfaction. From my Jesus-theistic standpoint, to work at a task God calls me to brings great emotional and spiritual fulfillment.

For me this applies to even small, seemingly insignificant tasks. For example, whenever I arrive at a friend's home and see dishes that need to be done, or trash that needs to be taken out, I'm finding that I'm beginning to love doing the dishes or carrying a trash across a parking lot. The purpose for me is: this will bless my friends. It is one thing they will not have to do. It is a way to show them that I love them. To work with a purpose is to co-labor with God and His purposes. That is not only good, but therapy for the soul. I want to come to the end of my life knowing God has worked through me to accomplish His desires.

This doesn't have to apply only to "good deeds." Colossians 3 tell us, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him... Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

To labor with no sense of purpose is a kind of hell. It is boredom. "Boredom" is not having nothing to do; boredom is finding no meaning in what you are doing. Purposeless work produces inner agitation. It is "a useless and ill-directed action of the body." Yuck! I continue to meet many people who live purposeless lives and thus experience a constant back-and-forth movement in their disquieted spirit. What should one do?

What Thomas Merton writes is helpful here. Merton says:

“Work occupies the body and the mind and is necessary for the health of the spirit. Work can help us to pray and be recollected, if we work properly. Agitation, however, destroys the spiritual usefulness of work and even tends to frustrate its physical and social purpose. Agitation is the useless and ill-directed action of the body. It expresses the inner confusion of a soul without peace.

Work brings peace to the soul that has a semblance of order and spiritual understanding. Agitation -- a condition of spirit that is quite normal in the world of business -- is the fruit of tension in a spirit that is turning dizzily from one stimulus to another and trying to react to fifteen different appeals at the same time. Under the surface of agitation, and furnishing it with its monstrous and inexhaustible drive, is the force of fear or elemental greed for money, or pleasure, or power. The more complex a man’s passion, the more complex his agitation.

All this is the death of the interior life. Occasional church-going and the recitation of hasty prayers have no power to cleanse this purulent wound.” (No Man Is an Island, 114-115)

Merton says that to work for the goals of money, pleasure, or power is to cultivate the agitated heart. It brings "the death of the interior life." The antidote to this is: dwell, now, in Christ. (See John 14-16) Abide in Jesus. Let Him shepherd your soul. A little bit of churchgoing won't help. Constant abiding will. Out of this Christ-dwelling comes not only His peace and joy but our life purpose.

The Needy

I have been drawing today. I enjoy drawing, especially when it is for other's enjoyment. Naturally, I am my own worst critic. I have been doing art-related activities for as long as I can remember. I've painted pictures of mountain landscapes, sketched epic battles between dragons and knights, and colored portraits of friends and famous folk. I've hand-crafted pottery filled with snakes or the blood of Jesus and woven tapestries that now hang on my wall. I've practiced thousands of hours and generally feel pretty good with what I can accomplish visually when I set my mind to it. But I cannot create pieces of art like my parents. Their sculptures and drawings put me in awe. As I look at their work, I cannot help but think, "I am a man of unclean artistic ability." I am in need.

So are you. We’re all a bunch of very needy people. My fellow artist and poet David once wrote, “Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.” We all need guidance. We all need direction. We all need help in this life. It is a good thing to recognize one’s neediness, for this realization puts one in position to be guided, directed, and helped. Only the needy know they need a shepherd. Only those who realize their need for guidance can be guided.

In a moment of God-inspired musical genius David wrote the first line to arguably the greatest worship song ever written. Out of his neediness David wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd.” All of David’s own talents were not enough. As brilliant as King David was, his own intelligence did not suffice. As courageous as he was, he still struggled with fear. David, the greatest King and leader Israel ever had, knew that he needed himself to be led. He needed a shepherd. And for that, David chose well.

A minister I firmly respect runs a seminary. In his class on spiritual formation he sends his students out for times of prayer, using Psalm 23 as their meditative focus. He instructs them: “When God speaks to you, write it down.” According to him, his experience is that God doesn’t let 40% of them get past verse 1. God asks them the question: “Am I really your shepherd?” That is the foundational question for all spiritual formation, transformation, renewal, and restoration. The answer to that question determines whether a person’s life and ministry will be authentic or inauthentic, relevant or irrelevant. This is because unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain; unless we are shepherded by God, we’re shepherded by some other god (like self; others; money; sex; power). The key question of the spiritual life is, as Henri Nouwen said: Who do you belong to?

The necessary precondition for authentic, relevant God-leadership is: being-led. To lead is to be led. To be led one must heart-recognize one’s great neediness. This is, spiritually, a very good place to be. How do we come to understand this?

I don’t think you can force this idea on people. I believe that the heart-recognition of personal neediness is given to people as a revelation. You cannot command this for other people. You cannot even teach or explain it effectively. It’s a revelation, a wakeup call, that God desires us all to have, but which all do not see. If one consistently abides in God’s presence, God Himself will show you this. It will be like me, admiring my latest sketch, thinking I’ve got my artistic creativity in a powerful place, watching my dad pick up a pen and begin to work, and then comes the revelation of personal artistic-neediness. If I was thinking that I didn’t need more ability and practice to draw like that, that I didn’t need help and shepherding to draw like that, such a thought has been, like a bubble, burst.

In the spiritual life neediness is cool, self-reliance sucks. If I really wanted to draw like my parents I’d need my parents to shepherd me individually. If I really want to be used by God I need to be constantly shepherded by God on a personal levl. Pray for a revelation of personal neediness. God wants to reveal this to you. He will, as you spend time with him.

Your spiritual life and effectiveness for the sake of God and His Kingdom is at stake.

Heartfelt Interlude Between Real Posts

Am I at the point of no improvement?
What of the depths that I still dwell in?
I try to excel, but I feel no movement.
Can I be free of this unreleasable sin?

Never underestimate my Jesus.
You're telling me that there's no hope;
I'm telling you, you're wrong.

Never underestimate my Jesus.
When the world around you crumbles,
He will be strong. He will be strong.

I throw up my hands: "Oh, the impossibilities!"
Frustrated and tired, where do I go from here?
Now I'm searching for the confidence I've lost so willingly.
Overcoming these obstacles is overcoming my fears.

Never underestimate my Jesus.
You're telling me that there's no hope;
I'm telling you, you're wrong.

Never underestimate my Jesus.
When the world around you crumbles,
He will be strong. He will be strong.

I think I can't! I think I can't!
But I think You can, I think You can....

Gather my insufficiencies and place them in Your hands.
Place them in Your hands. Place them in Your hands....

Never underestimate my Jesus.
You're telling me that there's no hope;
I'm telling you: you're wrong!

Never underestimate my Jesus.
When the world around you crumbles,
He will be strong. He will be strong.

Praises in the Storm?

If you've been a Christian any time at all, you've no doubt heard or even personally been told at some point that we are to praise God in periods of blessing, and praise God in periods of tribulation. It goes back to loving God regardless of the situation, and believing in Him.

When you go through the rough patches, though, do you know what to praise God for? I've asked myself that before. It wasn't doubt in God's power that made me ask - it was just simple logistics. When nothing in the world around me is giving me reason to be thankful, and it feels like God is off away somewhere preparing things for "some day" when He's going to answer, what do you have to praise Him for right then? You could "count your blessings," and name what God's done for you in the past. I've done that, but it's never made me feel all that appreciative at the time. I was just doing it because I knew I was supposed to. You could thank Him for the answer you know He's going to give eventually, but if you have no idea in what form that answer's going to come, it still feels hollow, at least to me. I mean, we should thank Him for future deliverance, but I really want something I can be thankful for in the here and now, when I'm in a valley. What does God have for me that's so great then?

I'm writing tonight about something you can tangibly see (in a way) during the rough times, something you can hold onto (surprisingly) and say, "Thank you, Lord, for THIS."

Let me back up a second. Right now, I'm in one of the worst places I've ever been. I think I say that each time I go through a trial, and I think each time, it's true. By walking through one valley of the shadow of death, God grants you new strengths to walk through the next, harder one - one you would not have been able to get through had you not first gone through the other. Some of you readers may know a portion of the tribulation around me, some of you may know nothing of any of it. Essentially, though, I'm being attacked on all sides. It honestly feels like everywhere I look, I see frustration, failure, and heartbreak. In my living arrangements, in my school, in my work, in my finances, in my friendships, in my relationships (or lack thereof), in my car, in my physical health, everywhere - literally NOTHING is going my way right now. It makes me want to throw my head up and just scream, "Do you even have anything left to throw at me, Satan? Do you think You might want to step in here sometime, God?!"

I feel battered. And exhausted. And utterly lost and alone. I'm almost afraid to attempt anything right now because the way things have been going, it will either fall away into nothing or worse, blow up in my face.

But this is not a pity party. This is a praise report.

The bigger the giants in your life, the fiercer the winds and waves, the higher the stone walls, the darker your night is... the better the opportunity for God to shine. Remember, our lives are about bringing glory to God. When everything else is stripped away, that is the purpose of our lives. The fires that we go through do exactly that - they strip everything else away, so that we realize only a miracle - only God - can save us; and when He does, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Him who delivered us, not our own workings or the workings of the world.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. I Peter 1:6-7

Earlier I told you that during those tribulations, you actually have something you can hold to and say thank you for, remember? I was referring to the tribulations themselves. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but we need to look at tribulations in the right way. The more tribulations that come against us, the deeper into crap that we fall... how much more will God deliver us out of those? If you're sitting high and easy on a mountain of blessings, praise God! But where do you have to go from there? Why do we go through hell in this life? To give us the opportunity to rely on God, and to give God the opportunity to wow the world with His deliverance. When you're lying beaten at the bottom of a valley, staring up at the cold, dark walls all around you, praise God! Where do you have to go from there? Up! The farther down you go, the stronger and more magnificent the day of deliverance will be!

But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

When we as Christians encounter periods of drought and have to walk through hell, we should count each one a blessing from God because each one of those are ways in which God is going to shine in our lives! We can be thankful FOR THE TRIALS because they are EVIDENCE that God is bringing abundance and relief! That is when He is strongest in our lives! The devil wants to throw evil at us to break us down, but we can turn it around on him! We can give thanks for that evil that comes against us because we see it as opportunity for our Savior to prove Himself to us and to the world that watches us!

Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Luke 22:31-32

So the next time you are broken by the conditions of the world in your life, choose to stand up and say, "Thank you for this, Jesus! Thank you for trusting me with this trial, with this opportunity to shine with Your light and to bring glory to Your Name! Thank you for delivering me in a mighty way, in such a way that all those around me will marvel and bring praise to You!"

God will deliver you. You know that. He promises to do so - see Romans 8:18, 28, 16:20; Deuteronomy 31:8; Psalm 34:4, 10, 17; Malachi 3:10; Jeremiah 29:11; Lamentations 3:31-32; Micah 7:8; Luke 12:6-7; 2 Corinthians 4:16-18; 1 Peter 5:7-10; 1 John 5:4-5; the list goes on and on!

When you need something, anything, to praise God for, you now know where to look - in the last place the devil expects you or wants you to. Because when you get to the place where you can honestly praise God in the storm, that's when your faith flourishes and that is when the giants fall, the waves die down, the walls crumble, the darkness flees, and when God is glorified! When you are disheartened and think the enemy is winning in your life, remember these sage words of C. S. Lewis and follow them - your victory is just around the next bend!

‎[The enemy's] cause is never in more danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [the Father's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken... and still obeys. - C. S. Lewis, the Screwtape Letters

He Promises to Deliver His People

So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up form that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey... (Exodus 3:8)

The children of Israel had been delivered from Egypt and wandered in the desert for 40 years before entering the land God had promised them.

But as soon as year number 41 came, the wandering was over for good. They entered into the land of milk and honey! Maybe it seems that you are in a desert period of your life. Maybe you feel like you've been stumbling around for 40 years. Don't worry, number 41 is on its way!

Look at these examples: Noah and his family were on the ark while it rained for 40 days and 40 nights—41 came, and the rain stopped. For 40 days Goliath showed up every morning and taunted Israel—41 came, and David slew him!

God has promised to bring you out of your Egypt as well—if you will hold on to your faith in Him. Whatever situation you are going through right now, don't give up. God is on your side! So if it seems like trouble has been raining down on you, don't worry because 41 is on the way. The rain is going to stop. Whatever giant is in your life, 41 is coming and that giant's coming down! You are more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus (see Romans 8:37). He will deliver you out of Egypt.

See for yourself: Genesis 7, 8; Samuel 17; Psalm 34:17, 19.