***This is my 75th post on Praises with a Skillful Song!***
This is my prayer in the desert
When all that's within me feels dry
This is my prayer in my hunger and need
My God is the God who provides
This is my prayer in the fire
In weakness or trial or pain
There is a faith proved of more worth than gold
So refine me Lord through the flame
Lately I've been dwelling on the idea of wilderness. It's one thing to sing a song like "Blessed be Your Name" and belt lyrics like "Blessed be Your name / When I'm found in the desert place / Though I walk through the wilderness / ... / On the road marked with suffering / Though there's pain in the offering" in the midst of our very American-flavored Christianity without much in the way of suffering, persecution, or hardship.
For the first time in what I would term my maturing personal relationship with Christ I've walked through a (small in some regards, not so small in others) wilderness this summer. Sure I'd had hardship these past few years, but it was always in the midst of a season of blessing and growth. I'd known that I was going to be experiencing a change in seasons with graduation and transitioning into doing EDGE with The Navigators, I just wasn't exactly sure what that was going to look like. It's turned out to be much different than I expected.
At the beginning of the summer I felt like the theme verse for this coming season in my life was the first verse of II Samuel chapter 2. After a period of waiting on God, David asks God if he should go up to one of the cities of Judah. God's answer is "Go up." David asks where he should go and God provides a specific city/path for him to follow: Hebron.
Honestly, it's been much more difficult than I'd expected. David goes up and is crowned King of Judah within three verses. Not that I was expecting to come away with a five-figure check after just one face-to-face, but what I was expecting was closer to the idea of green pastures and quiet waters and not anything like the valley of the shadow of death.
I should have expected it to be more difficult and here's why: Jesus set the example for all of us with a perfect life, right? Well not that any of our lives will line up experience for experience with his, but Jesus had to go through the wilderness before beginning His ministry too. Matthew 4:1 reads, "Then Jesus [after His baptism] was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil." Now I could literally go on for paragraph after paragraph and keep sharing, but I'll curtail my thoughts into two main points: the Spirit's leading and Jesus sustenance in the desert.
The same God that led David with the words "Go up" led Jesus into the wilderness and that same God is leading me now. And before God led David up to be crowned king He had David endure years of living, you guessed it, in the desert and running for his life from Saul. I still feel that II Samuel 2:1 is my theme verse for the present, but what I'm supposed to learn from it is completely different than I expected. It's easy to follow God when He's leading us where we want to go. Do I still follow Him when things don't turn out how I thought they should?
Before Jesus could begin His ministry, God used the wilderness and the Devil's temptations to expose what Jesus' true priorities were and where His soul was rooted: the Word. When everything was stripped away from Him, including food to eat, what did Jesus cling to and rely on? It was the Scriptures that sustained Him in the desert and enabled Him to stand up to the Devil's schemes. Am I looking for life in my own efforts and the approval or support of others or in God's Word to me?
Do you trust God to lead you, even if it isn't in the direction you expected? Where are you rooted: the world, or the Word?
Here's a video of Hillsong's "Desert Song" (the lyrics from the beginning of this post)-I've gained a much deeper appreciation for it over these past few weeks.
