"The Lord your God led you.. in the wilderness, to humble you and to test you, to know what was in your heart..." Deuteronomy 8:2 (NKJV)
When I was 10, my maternal grandfather had to get heart surgery in order to give himself a fighting chance to live a little longer. He was an 90 year old man, strong, and so immersed in the Lord. After many hours in surgery, we finally received the call that he did well and is in recovery. I remember smiling with happiness to see my grandfather alive and well. He was still recovering during the holiday season and we figured we would be able to take him home by Christmas and continue the celebration and thanksgiving of a successful surgery.
Christmas Eve came around and at 10 AM, my grandmother calls in a panic. My grandfather had a heart attack and fell on the ground in his hospital room. As we rushed to the hospital, I didn't know what to think or feel at the time. As a 10 year old, you see the things around you move and you watch how people are reacting not knowing whether you understand the feelings they're going through.
I can recall how my mom was in the room as they were trying to revive my grandfather. I faintly saw a glimpse of him on the floor as the medical team worked on him. In the midst of this situation, I always remember how my family said we need to pray together and call our friends and family and let them know what was happening. Being 10, I knew that praying was talking to God; however, my mindset of prayer was still immature and growing. It seem that everyone was talking to someone we couldn't see and I didn't understand when they said, "We're praying for a miracle." How can something impossible happen?
My grandfather was dead on the floor with no heart beat for the last 20 minutes. The medical team already spoke to my mom at 15 minutes stating that they will need to stop since oxygen has not flowed to his brain. My mom was persistent and believed and prayed that my grandfather was coming back. I, on the other hand still couldn't comprehend the level of faith they were placing on a God that couldn't be seen.
Next thing I knew, 27 minutes later, my grandfather's heart started to beep. The medical team was shocked and instinctively began to prepare my grandfather for his transfer to the ICU. We were told that due to the long period of time my grandfather was on the ground with no heart beat or oxygen flowing to the brain, in most cases it usually takes 8 minutes without oxygen to cause brain damage resulting to a person staying in a vegetative state.
The fight wasn't over and we still needed another miracle to happen. We waited and prayed almost the whole day in the ICU waiting room, hoping my grandfather would wake up from his coma, and later that night, at about 7:30 PM, my grandfather woke up and asked the nurse for coffee! I couldn't believe what I saw, what we just experienced, what I just saw God do! This was the moment when I started to see how real God was. After this incident, my grandfather lived for another 8 years and passed away peacefully at the age of 98.
The reason for the background story of my grandfather was to share how I thought a "wilderness" journey only happened one or two times in life. You get maybe one big one and the rest would be tiny. I honestly thought that was the worse that could ever happen to our family. Then the following month, my 82 year old paternal grandfather went in for heart surgery and there were complications during the surgery. The doctor spoke to my dad and told him that he would have to say goodbye to my grandfather on the operating table since there was nothing that could be done to stop the bleeding. If they closed my grandfather's chest, he would bleed internally and if they left it open, he would still bleed to death; however, God gave us another miracle to see and experience.
The doctor's last words to my dad was that the medical team would prepare my grandfather for the final goodbyes. An hour passed, the doctor didn't come back yet. Another hour passed and the doctor still did not return to get my dad. By the end of the night, the doctor finally came out and was in shock at what occurred. As they were preparing my grandfather for his final moments, the bleeding stopped. Because of what happened, the doctor was able to work further on my grandfather and completely finish the surgery with no other issues. My paternal grandfather lived for another 9 years after. I felt so invincible in a way where nothing worse could happen to us. I felt God on our side and I could never doubt His might or faithfulness again.
Then my sister passed away in 2020 of a rare form of brain/skull cancer. I really couldn't comprehend the circumstances unfolding before me. I didn't understand why it had to be her. There was no straight answer to why my sister had to be taken so early. I began to complain and battle with God as to how He could allow us to go through such an experience. I started to feel like God wasn't real and everything I believed in was beginning to seem unclear.
I had months of feeling like God just left us high and dry, distant and not wanting to hear our cry. Towards the end of 2020 I felt like I was carrying such a heavy weight on my shoulder that I realized it wasn't healthy anymore. I needed God to speak to me. I wanted His help to get the answers to all the confusing thoughts I've been having. Then I encountered this book again by John Bevere and I learned more on this wilderness journey that I began to see I was in.
God's purpose for our wilderness journey isn't to make us suffer. His purpose is to allow us to experience this journey so that we are prepared for where He is leading us to be. Just as the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness, so will the Lord lead us out of our wilderness.
The Lord will first humble us then test us. He does this so we can know the true nature of our hearts. In order for us to be humbled we need to get to a point of being grateful and finding joy through all circumstances. The wilderness journey is where God trains us. This is where our character begins to be molded and developed, and our faith is strengthened.
The Lord humbles us by allowing us to hunger and be fed by manna (Deuteronomy 8:3). God humbled the children of Israel by allowing them to hunger, but His next statement states that He fed them with manna. This sounds like an oxymoron. How could the Lord cause them to hunger while feeding them manna?
Manna is the best food that can be eaten. As John Bevere states in the book, "It's on the menu of the angels!" Elijah was strengthened for a forty day journey on just two cakes of manna. The Israelites had an abundance of it. The Lord would literally drop the manna from heaven! Manna would come every morning six days a week and on the sixth day, the manna miraculously lasted through the seventh day. They never missed a meal from the day God first gave them manna until they camped on the shores of the Promise Land.
So how and why exactly did God say, " I caused you to hunger?" In what way was God speaking of? To get a better understanding of the Israelites situation, it would be as if we were to eat bread day in day out with no extras. No honey, no butter, no jelly, NOTHING! Can you imagine eating plain bread for forty years? This is how God made them hunger. God didn't provide them the things their appetite wanted but what they really needed to stay alive and healthy.
In saying this, I reflect back on the COVID-19 pandemic and recall our lifestyle during 2020. It was definitely a certain type of wilderness journey. Just like the wilderness journey of the Israelites seeing desert and trees everyday, we were all homebound for a certain period of time. It didn't help at all that when my sister passed away there was no other place to go because we were on lockdown. We were seeing the same thing more often than ever, and it was brutally worse that I had to see my sister's bedroom empty everyday. However, through this pandemic and living a new norm, God provided the things necessary to endure the journey but not the things we necessarily wanted (like this pandemic to end right away or my sister come back to life).
God provides us the basic necessities that we need to be able to endure and survive our own wilderness journey. Looking at the children of Israel, they had what they needed but not necessarily what they wanted.
We can look at the verse again in Deuteronomy 8:3:
3 So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.
God created hunger by removing anything that would have satisfied the desires and wants of their flesh, while still meeting their fundamental needs. The hunger provided this test: God wanted them to see if they would desire Him instead of what they had left behind. Would they seek Him or would they seek after their fleshly wants? Would they hunger and thirst for righteousness or for comfort and pleasure? Unfortunately, the Israelites didn't have their hearts set on the one satisfying their needs. They were more focused on what would satisfy them physically.
When we get impatient in our own wilderness journey, we begin to depend on ourselves and our wants rather than depending on the timing of God to provide us more than what we just need. I've been experiencing my own wilderness journey for years. Not just with what happened to my sister in 2020 but even before that. I was going through some small deserts without realizing it. I kept taking matters into my own hands because I was so impatient with the wilderness journey. I wanted to get to the destination already that I was doing EVERYTHING to get there as soon as possible not realizing that I was just prolonging my journey and placing myself in places that took me steps back rather than being able to progress forward.
Just as John Bevere shares in the book, he had to continually remind himself that he was right where God wanted him to be and that he wasn't wasting time and God would fulfill His promises. He continues to share that on this highway in the wilderness that the Lord is building for us, we need to always run well with Him. We should never ever decide to pass Him because it seems like He is just moving too slow. We need to TRUST in God's timing.
The Israelites remembered the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic that they were able to eat in Egypt, and now all they had was manna (Numbers 11:4-6) in which they complained about. They were looking back on the things they left behind in Egypt where they had good food but were slaves, and that life seem to appear better than to journey freely in the wilderness where God had led them.
The children of Israel began to complain and cry out for meat and God heard their cry and so He gave them their request, so they ate (meat-quail) and were well filled, for He gave them their own desire. They were not deprived of their cravings; But (He) sent leanness into their soul. (Psalm 106:15, 78:29-30). The Israelites received what they wanted but at a high price. With this came leanness of the soul. This leanness made them unfit to endure, unable to pass the test which ultimately ended with them not being able to enter the Promised Land.
The sin wasn't requesting for meat, but rather what the request represented. It showed the dissatisfaction of their heart with God and His method of leading and providing. God freed them from slavery in Egypt so that they can be free and enjoy the blessings the Lord was going to provide them; however, through their journey, they became impatient and leaned on themselves instead of God's provision. In doing so, they were looking back at their life as slaves and regretting that they were free from slavery, rather than moving forward patiently to see that there was a better life God was preparing for them.
This is a lesson for all of us in which if we seek only the benefits of the promise and not the Promiser Himself, the blessings instead of the Blesser, we will not have the strength needed for the desert moments of our life. I can say that I now truly understand this statement said by John Bevere. In the past, I looked at what the promises were supposed to be rather than seeing the Promiser leading me to amazing "promised lands". It's one thing to seek the Lord for what He can give us or what He can do for us, and it's quite another to seek the Lord for who He is.
I love the example that the author shares on this. The first option is for our own benefit and our selfish motive which will result at best, in an immature relationship with God versus seeking the Lord for who and what He is and to build the intimate and strong relationship we all desire. God has promised to take care of our basic needs, so in the wilderness He provides daily bread, not an abundance of things. In the wilderness God knows what we need spiritually, and it may not be what we think we need but He meets our needs in this time not necessarily our wants.
The purpose of the wilderness is to purify and strengthen us. Our pursuit is to be His heart, not His provision. Then when we come to abundant times, we won't forget that it is the Lord who gives us abundance in order to establish His covenant (Deuteronomy 8:2-18). I can't express the realization I had of this. Many time in the past I looked to God in the tough times and forgot about His provisions during the good. Referencing back to the story of my grandfather, I forgot about God's provisions when He answered our prayers one after the other and gave us one miracle after the other.
It wasn't until my sister's passing where my heart and mind wanted to seek more of God because I was so confused with the how and why of my sister leaving this earth so young. Feeling and knowing the reality of my sister being gone hurts and it can bring me into a dark moment of trying to figure out why she was taken and why God couldn't give me another miracle. But instead of complaining about what had happened, I had to see things differently and come to a realization of finding Joy in all times and remembering that when God provides another miracle, another answered prayer, another blessing, that I don't forget His goodness and all the provisions He will give abundantly in the right time.
I am so excited to see the ending of each wilderness journey I face. Just recently, my husband and I have been praying for something for years. In his own journey there was a lot of small desert journeys that led into one large wilderness journey in which at the time we kept asking the Lord when will this prayer be answered? After 7 years of praying, 7 years of this wilderness journey, 7 years of character molding and more growth in God, He answered and the provision and destination was better than we could have imagined.
Knowing and seeing God in the perspective of full submission and laying our burdens and requests at His feet, He will indeed answer when the time is right. Had God answered this prayer right away, I don't think my husband and I would have that deeper relationship with the Lord because it came so easily to us that we wouldn't have seen the Promiser, we would have just looked at the promise. And now, we focus fully on the Promiser himself and rejoice in the promises that He fulfilled with a heart and mind focused on not forgetting that it is God who provides us with abundance.
The issue we face in this day and age is that our definition of needs versus wants differs from reality. We call our wants "needs" which leads us into the wrong direction. Maybe too many of us have yet to learn what Paul meant in Philippians 4:11-13 (AMPC):
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Paul learned through the strength of Christ that he could be as content in dry times as he was in abundance. Consider the attitude of Jesus in His ministry. He was not selfishly motivated. Jesus took upon Himself our sin, sickness, and the death penalty. He valued our welfare as more important than His own, even though He was innocent of any sin. His purpose for life and ministry was not self-serving, but self-giving.
Such maturity of character is developed in us by God when we are in the wilderness journey. The wilderness is where the fruit of the Spirit is cultivated. Watered by the intense desire to know Him, we learn to walk as the Lord walks. So let us face our tough wilderness journeys with Joy, patience, and full dependence on the timing of God. It will be difficult, it may take years, but know that God's promises for us are bigger and better than we could ever imagine.
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