I LOVE THE Book of Deuteronomy, which records where Moses reviewed all the Law, Torah, and the wilderness wanderings of a people. Through forty years of wilderness wanderings, the children of Israel had been vexed because of decisions they made that were influenced by unbelief and fear (Num. 14). However, now the time had come for the people to move forward past the confusion, uproar, and trouble of the last season.
In a later chapter I will explain vexation more fully, but let me give you a brief understanding now. The Hebrew word mehuwmah (“meh-hoo-maw”) means “confusion or uproar leading to destruction, discomfiture, trouble, and tumult.” When your spirit is vexed, your whole life seems confused.
Moses explained all the blessings that were available to the people in the future if they would obey the Lord and His commandments. Then he explained that the power of vexation would come upon them, spirit, soul, and body, if they did not follow after the Lord’s way: “The Lord shall send you curses, confusion, and rebuke in every enterprise to which you set your hand, until you are destroyed, perishing quickly because of the evil of your doings by which you have forsaken me [Moses and God as one]” (Deut. 28:20, AMP). This is the concept of vexation that is linked with our disobedience to the Word of God. There comes a time to leave your wilderness and enter into the next level of prosperity for your life. However, if you review carefully every one of your wilderness times, you will see that during those times, the Word became much more powerful in your life.
In this chapter we will discuss wilderness and how we interact with the Lord in a place of desolation. The Word that we receive in our wilderness place can be a great key to help us to see past the wilderness and learn to overcome murmuring, complaining, and fear in the future.
A TIME TO BELIEVE
I powerfully came into relationship with the Lord when I was eighteen years old. Since that time, one of the things that I have always done is read the Bible. I can read as many as eight chapters per day or a complete book of the Bible. I can find myself lost in God’s Word, because the Word is living and the Person of the Word is real. Every year I try to read through the Word based upon the times that we are living in. I guess this is what makes me known as an Issachar prophet. Issachar was the Torah tribe, and they knew how to use the Word in time to tell Israel what strategic moves to make to keep advancing.
Many times I will read the Word aloud back to the Lord. He inspired men to write it for us, so it’s always good to read it back to Him. Once when I was in a trial to overcome, I had planned to read Romans 6–8. I began by reading Romans 6 and got to verse 14: “For sin shall not have dominion over you …” I stopped abruptly and asked the Lord a question: “Lord, is this a true statement?”
I heard a voice so loudly that I thought there was a person standing in the room with me. The voice said, “Yes!”
I said, “Lord, is this book completely true?”
He said, “Yes. Obey My Word.” At that moment I knew that I did not have to submit to sin or allow it to be my master. I knew that nothing in my bloodline was against God, and His best for my life had to control my actions. I knew that I did not have to believe what a person said if it did not align with what God said.
I had never been taught this before in any of the church services that I had attended. A power that seemed to have an inherited control in my family broke at that moment in my life. The domination of something in my bloodline for generations had been exposed by the Spirit of God. The Word and the Spirit had addressed a power in my bloodline, rearranged my life, and then broke me into a new place of victory. My life took a drastic turn from that moment.
I knew I never had to submit to demonic temptations in the same way that my dad had submitted and been overcome. I knew I didn’t have to fall to the same strategies and fears that Satan had used to entice my grandfather away from God’s best. I knew that I could walk faithfully before the Lord and be in faithful covenant.
When I picked up the Word to read, the still, small voice of Father said, “Do not go to the next verse until you believe the verse you just read.” Needless to say, that year it took me much longer to read through the Word.
THE WAR OF THE WORD, THE SPIRIT,
AND OUR BONE MARROW
Upon this encounter with the Spirit of God that I just described to you, my daily devotional Bible readings and prayer took on new meaning. God was going to make me a man of faith just like those you read about in Hebrews 11. However, He was going to make sure His Word penetrated deep into me and changed all of my thought processes to align with His.
Hebrews 4:12 (AMP) says, “For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.” This is one of the most incredible truths that I have ever encountered.
The Word of God is alive. This Word is full of power and is like a sword that can divide a person’s soul and go down into their eternal part, the spirit. The Word is like a breath of life. The Word brings us life. Our bone marrow carries the Word through our body to nurture us with His life. The Word and the Spirit of truth flow through our blood and cleanse our conscience. This gives us clarity to see our way into the future.
The Word causes our heart to change. I believe this change is both a spiritual and physical change. Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Satan’s greatest strategy is to stop you from hearing what God has to say to you. He knows that if the voice of God penetrates you, then it will go deep into your bone marrow and rearrange the production of the cell structures within your body, as well as the blood flow of your body. The Word is another key in the war with evil forces that try and stop spiritual life from entering into your physical being. I believe the enemy’s greatest strategy is to separate you from the Word and love of God. If he can separate you from the Word of God, you lose the power of life working through your lifegiving blood system.
As you read the Word of God and allow that Word to be stored in your heart and develop the way you think, your blood system begins to be purified. The Spirit of God will actually begin to invade blood structures. Then gifts of healing and unusual workings of miracles will manifest. Regarding the outflow of the heart, Matthew 12:34–35 says, “Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.” Romans 10:10 expands by saying, “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
I believe that each time we are ready to move across into our next dimension of promise, we must pass or cross over from one place of faith to our next dimension of glory. In this crossing-over time, there is always a wilderness through which we must journey. How we make this journey through our wilderness is a crucial key to our being established in the new place of promise and anointing.
THE WILDERNESS: THE PLACE WHERE
YOUR WORD COMES FORTH
When the Lord began to impress me that His people were to move forward toward their promise, gain momentum, and not look back, the Spirit of God spoke to me and said, “It is time to come through fifty days of wilderness, receive instruction, and then move into power, war for the promise, and enter into rest.” Let’s see what happens at the end of fifty days in the wilderness. As long as the church is connected to the Head, we represent the Head on Earth and do not reflect the tail of society. We are not to fear the wilderness but confront our wilderness enemy and enter into a new level of relational power with the Father.
We all are destined for wilderness seasons. I would love to say that you will never experience a wilderness time, but that is not a biblical principle. Wilderness is a biblical principle. The wilderness is likened to our word for “desert.” In reality, during biblical times, the wilderness was usually a rocky, dry wasteland.
We also find in the Bible that wildernesses included oases. Even though many times we find ourselves in a wilderness season, in the midst of our wilderness we can usually find a time of refreshing and a cool drink from the Lord. Biblically, the wilderness could also be a place of refuge. Remember, David fled Saul and entered a wilderness time. Even though his promise was not fulfilled during this time, the call of God on his life was protected.
The wilderness has a time frame.
We always find in the Bible that a wilderness season had a determined time. The wilderness period when God’s covenant people left Canaan and went to Egypt was four hundred years. However, God had promised a release. God’s covenant people wandered in the wilderness for forty years. Technically, they could have entered the Promised Land within seventy days. However, God had a time of release.
When God’s people left His purposes to play the part of a harlot, they went into the Babylonian captivity or wilderness for seventy years. However, God promised a release.
Jesus was baptized to fulfill all righteousness and then entered into a forty-day wilderness period. However, the Father had a release.
I believe that we help determine the length of time we stay in our wilderness. If you want to do a interesting prophetic study, you can study the biblical wildernesses, which include Shur, Sin, Sinai, Paran, Zin, En Gedi, Judah, Moan, and Ziph, to name a few. We also need to remember that Jesus fed the four thousand in a desert wilderness place east of the Sea of Galilee. Therefore, He used the wilderness as the place to teach multiplication to His disciples.
Wilderness wanderings
Wilderness wanderings are complex. Many times people cannot understand what you are going through. However, if you will think of the wilderness as a departure from enslavement and an advancement toward your promise, you will stay focused to get to your next place.
In the wilderness there has to be a viable option for movement. There are usually several routes through your wilderness. The decision of the route determines the amount of warfare you will experience. Sometimes the best route is not what seems to our mind as the best or shortest route (Exod. 13:17). How we submit ourselves to God in the wilderness many times determines how long we will wander.
In the Old Testament, sins were transferred to a scapegoat, which was released into the wilderness. This is why Jesus had to enter into the wilderness to once and for all withstand all of our temptations. Therefore, Jesus is our best example of overcoming wilderness wanderings. Because of His resistance, He was able to withstand His wilderness time in forty days. I believe He resisted everything that we will ever have to encounter and resist. He entered the wilderness filled with the Spirit, but He came out with power. Any time you enter a wilderness season, have confidence you can resist and come into a new level of power.
Wilderness dangers
In the New Testament we find a warning to wilderness Christians. We are warned not to make the same mistakes as the Israelites (1 Cor. 10:1–13; Heb. 3:16–19). In biblical times we find that the wilderness was a place inhabited by beasts of prey, snakes, scorpions, and demons. These creatures were able to produce fear of destruction, but they could be overcome through power, authority, and submission. Our greatest snare in the wilderness is murmuring and complaining over our present position before we reach the place God has for us. Murmuring and complaining hold you in your wilderness longer than it should take to get to your next place. Wilderness complaining and murmuring are a form of unbelief. Wildernesses are destined for the removal of unbelief. However, many times when we enter into a desolate place, we forget God’s goodness and find unbelief being created.
There is good news and bad news in the wilderness. We find the precedent of God sustaining His people in wilderness times. However, we find the danger of entering into dissatisfaction, remaining there the rest of our lives, and never experiencing the fullness God has for us.
Another key danger of a wilderness time is for fear to develop within as the result of the giants you see in your future. At Kadesh Barnea (Num. 20), the designated leaders of the tribes went in to spy out the promise. Numbers 14:34 (KJV) says, “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.” Many times in your wilderness experience, God will begin to show you your promise. You will have an opportunity to mix the word of promise with faith or to choose to enter into fear over the resistant forces that you will have to face in your quest for God to manifest the promise. One of the greatest dangers of your wilderness season is that you may choose not to mount up with a mind to war over your promised inheritance. In the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings, a whole generation was led astray by the leaders, who discouraged the people from entering into war over God’s promise for their lives.
The journey
Life revolves around making your journey through the stops in your wildernesses and experiencing triumph—and then journeying again! For four hundred years, Israel lived as slaves in Egypt. They lived in fear, lack, bondage, and oppression by their enemy. Then God came to them with a promise. He said, “I have more for you than what you have known. I want to bring you out of bondage and take you into a rich land, a land flowing with milk and honey. This was a place of peace, prosperity, and blessing.” The Book of Exodus describes the process of how, through the blood of the Passover lamb, God redeemed Israel out of Egypt.
However, when Israel left Egypt, they didn’t find themselves in the Promised Land. They found themselves in the wilderness. That wilderness was not their destination, but it was a necessary part of the route to the promise. The wilderness was a place of testing. Nowhere did they see “milk and honey”—the picture that had been portrayed when God’s promise had been reiterated.
The overall goal of the testing was to teach them to trust the One who was leading them. God had to become God to this people. He would have to become the object of their faith and worship. They would have to learn to respond to new situations by faith. Without faith, they would not be able to enter into the great blessings God wanted to give them. As you read through the Bible, you discover that those who learned to trust God in the wilderness finally did enter the Promised Land. God’s goal for His people is always to bring them into the place of His blessing. Israel’s journey is a picture of the journey all of us are on.
God has a personal promised land for each one of us! God has a goal, a call, a destiny for your life that includes the fulfillment of every promise. Your journey begins when you trust Jesus and are redeemed. That sets you free from bondage to sin and Satan, but it doesn’t automatically bring you into the promise. Many times evangelists promise their hearers that getting saved will bring them into the wonderful experience of God’s blessing. While these promises are true, many people don’t understand the process. The result is that some people are surprised when they get saved, only to find themselves in the wilderness.
GOD’S JOURNEY ALWAYS
LEADS THROUGH WILDERNESS
You can’t get to the Promised Land without going through the wilderness. God wants to bring you through wildernesses and into His promised blessing, but sometimes if you select the most direct route in an attempt to escape the wilderness, you miss your training for overcoming and end up being overcome.
Let’s look at Israel’s journey. As we read the Book of Exodus, the first thing we notice is that God didn’t take them on a direct route. A direct route would have taken them from Egypt to the Promised Land in less than two weeks. But if they had gone the direct route, they would not have been prepared to enter when they got there. The enemies on the direct route were too strong for a people who were just following but not particularly understanding how to war.
God first took the children of Israel to Sinai to teach them to be His people. The journey to Sinai was a journey through wilderness. Now, the wilderness was not a pleasant place to journey through. The wilderness is not a place you would choose for a nice vacation. Although the wilderness is not a comfortable place, the wilderness is a functional place. Uncomfortable places make us feel insecure. Usually we can’t see where our provision will come from. All we see is sand and dust, and we feel hot—and then more sand and dust and feeling hot. There may be a few rock clefts that we will need to climb while we are dusty and hot.
You can easily get lost in the wilderness, because you have few points of reference. The scorpions and snakes move quickly, and their abundance creates confusion. Sometimes your way seems blocked. How can sand block you? Well, you get so thirsty that you can’t seem to get over the next sand dune. In the wilderness you can easily have fear and anxiety. In the wilderness, you’ll be tempted to respond like Israel by murmuring and complaining.
UNDERSTANDING THE WILDERNESS—
GOD’S PERSPECTIVE
It’s not always a negative thing to be in the wilderness. There are times when God leads all of us into the wilderness. God doesn’t want you to live in the wilderness. God doesn’t want you to wander in the wilderness. God doesn’t want you to die in the wilderness. But God has good purposes for taking you through the wilderness.
The wilderness is a place of transition. Israel had to go through the wilderness to get to the Promised Land. There are times you can’t get to your destination without passing through the wilderness.
The most common Hebrew word for “wilderness” in the Bible is midbar. The NIV Bible usually translates midbar as “desert.” As I stated earlier, when the Bible speaks of wilderness, it’s not usually picturing a broad expanse of sand. There is more to the wilderness than sand, snakes, and scorpions. In the Bible, the word wilderness simply means “a desolate, uninhabited region.” The wilderness areas described in the Bible were dry, but they were not without life. The wilderness had large areas of vegetation. In the ancient world, the wilderness fulfilled an important function. The Hebrew word midbar really means “pasture land”! It comes from a root word that means “to drive a flock of sheep.”
The wilderness did not have enough vegetation for human settlement, but it was great for sheep. The wilderness was where shepherds tended their sheep. That’s why the wilderness is often a picture of the Christian life.
Living in a fallen world, we are often in some kind of wilderness. God wants us to know He is there as our Shepherd to care for us in every wilderness. The wilderness is the primary place we learn God’s love and protection.
When you find yourself in the wilderness, it doesn’t mean you’ve missed God. In Luke 4, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness. We read, “Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Luke 4:1). God also led Israel into the wilderness. When Israel ended up in the wilderness, it didn’t mean they had taken a wrong turn. They were following the cloud. God wanted them to be in the wilderness. There are times that God will lead you into the wilderness as well. It is important to know why He leads you into the wilderness and what He desires to accomplish there.
Let’s use Israel as our example.
THE RED SEA
Coming out of Egypt, the first thing the children of Israel encountered was the Red Sea. This was a traumatic experience. Israel made it out of Egypt, but when they got to the Red Sea, they looked behind and saw Pharaoh chasing after them to try to take them back. This is a picture of a brand-new Christian. When you give your life to Jesus, you are set free, but you quickly discover that your old life will follow after you and try to take you back. Old friends will come around and try to entice you back into the old lifestyle. Old habits will try to resurface.
For Israel, the key to freedom was to pass through the water, and God made a way for them to do that. As they passed through the waters, their old life was cut off behind them. That’s a picture of baptism. Baptism cuts you off from your past. Baptismal waters make a declaration. They say, “You are a new creature.” Baptism is a time of great joy. When Israel came through the water, they had a big praise celebration!
God will give you victory so that your faith builds for your next test on the road. To enter your destiny, your faith needs to grow. Faith grows when it is tested, so God will puts you in situations where your faith is tested, and that takes place in the wilderness.
FIVE WILDERNESS TESTS
In their season of testing the Israelites encountered five key tests. This was not a pleasant part of their path to walk.
1. Marah: bitter water
When they left the shores of the Red Sea, Israel traveled through the desert for three days without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” Israel was in a bad situation. They were three days into their journey in the desert and were running out of water. This was a group of two million people—men, women, and children, along with all their livestock. If they found no water to drink, they would all die.
After three days in the desert, they came to a beautiful oasis. This appeared to be a miracle on their road. You can just picture them running toward the water and throwing themselves down at its edge, eager for a big drink of fresh water. But when they tasted it, they spit it out. The water was bitter! It was poisoned! Undrinkable! They still had no water to drink. Faced with this problem, they had a choice. Their first option was that they could choose to remember what God had done for them in the past. They could have chosen to believe He would provide. They could have said, “Lord, we will trust You to meet our needs.”
Their other option was that they could focus on their problem and grumble in unbelief. Unfortunately, they did the same thing we often do—they grumbled and complained. Let me camp out here for a while since this is where we normally camp out. In the Christian life, many of us never get past this first wilderness stop. Complaining, or murmuring, is dangerous. Here are four dangers of murmuring:
1. Murmuring cuts off our vision for the future. Jesus did not murmur and complain on the cross, because His eyes were fixed on the outcome: “For the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2). We don’t complain in the wilderness if our eyes are on the promised land! Our problem is that Satan tells us there is no way out of the wilderness. Satan tells us, “You will die in the wilderness—there’s no way out!” God says, “Follow Me! I have a promised land for you!” We get to choose who we’re going to agree with. When we complain, we are agreeing with the devil that our future is cut off.
2. Murmuring is dangerous because it causes us to doubt God’s goodness for the present. When we complain, we are saying, “God, I don’t like the route You have mapped for my life.”
3. Murmuring causes unbelief to deepen and grow. The Lord told me something awhile back. He said, “Unbelief is like a seed; if you water it, it will grow.” Every time we complain, we are watering our unbelief. What happens when you are underwater and open your mouth wide? Water comes in! In the same way, when we open our mouth to complain, unbelief floods in.
4. Murmuring invites greater adversity. Some of us have gotten into a cycle that gets worse and worse! When we’re having a problem with someone and we complain, what happens? We experience more adversity. Murmuring puts us under a curse. Let me prove this from Scripture. What was Israel’s complaint in the wilderness? The Jewish people said, “We are going to die in the wilderness!” That was not God’s plan. He had promised to get them to the Promised Land.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against Me? I have heard the complaints which the children of Israel make against Me. Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you: The carcasses of you who have complained against Me shall fall in this wilderness.’”
—NUMBERS 14:27–29
What was God was saying? “You have refused to come into agreement with My words over your life, so instead I will come into agreement with your words.” We must be careful about what we say.1
Returning to the account of the bitter waters at Marah, we find that Moses cried out to the Lord, and God was gracious and provided. The Lord showed Moses a piece of wood. He said, in effect, “Moses, let Me tell you a secret. Bitter water is not a problem for Me! I can heal bitter water. See that piece of wood? Put it in the water and see what happens.” Moses put the stick in the water, and the water was healed. And then God said something else: “And by the way, Moses … I not only heal water; I heal people! If you listen to My voice, I will keep you well, for I am the Lord who heals you.” This is where God revealed Himself by the covenant name Yahweh Rophe. God was identifying Himself to His people as a God who would heal their physical infirmities. God wants us to know Him that way also. That is always part of who God is!
This was the precursor of our Healer hanging on a tree (the cross) to deliver us from all of our past murmuring and complaining and making a way for us to advance into the promise of eternal life. We can learn to praise God in adversity. We can praise God for His goodness. Even when God has us in the wilderness, there are blessings for which we can praise Him. When Israel was in the wilderness, they received manna (bread) from heaven. It came every day. Their shoes did not wear out for forty years. They saw the visible Shekinah glory of God leading them as a pillar of cloud by day and as a pillar of fire by night. God’s goodness is not cut off from us in the wilderness. We need to take our eyes off the discomfort of our situation and look around us. We will surely find things for which we can offer praise. We can praise God for His presence. No matter what wilderness we are in, God is in it with us. His presence is there. We can praise God for the outcome. No matter what wilderness we are in, God has a plan for us through that wilderness, and it is a plan to take us into a place of promise.
2. Elim: abundant blessing
Their next stop was Elim. Exodus 15:27 reads, “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees; so they camped there by the waters.” Elim was a beautiful place, a place of rest and full provision. Usually when people teach about Israel’s testing in the wilderness, they skip right over Elim. But Elim was a test also. This was a different kind of test. Elim wasn’t a test based on lack but a test based on God’s blessing. After the hot, dry desert and the disappointment at Marah, God brought them to a beautiful place. The test here was, How would they respond to blessing? When God blesses us, He’s looking for a response of thankfulness. His goal is that we “serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything” (Deut. 28:47).
When things were bad, Israel was always quick to complain. Would they be just as quick to praise God with a thankful heart when He blessed them? Again, they failed the test. We read the account of their stay at Elim, and there is no mention of a thankful response.
3. The Wilderness of Sin: no food
Next they came to the Wilderness of Sin. The problem there was a lack of food. By this time, the people should have begun learning about the goodness of God. They should have concluded that they could trust Him to watch over them. But again, they only murmured and complained. Exodus 16 tells us that they came to the Desert of Sin and grumbled against Moses: “If only we had died in Egypt! There we ate all the food we wanted.” When they got hungry, suddenly the place of bondage in Egypt didn’t look so bad. They quickly forgot that their children had been murdered and they were worked to death! All they remembered was the food. Their problem was that they were looking backward to Egypt instead of looking forward to the promise. In a time of testing, it’s important to keep your eyes on the promise. But even though they failed the test, God showed His willingness to provide. He brought them quail in the evening and manna in the morning.
4. Rephidim: no water
Then they came to Rephidim. The problem in Rephidim was that there was no water to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” God was again testing them to see if they would trust Him.
They had already seen God’s ability and power. They had seen that God handled water problems very easily. He turned the Nile to blood and then back to water. He opened the way through the water at the Red Sea then closed it back over the Egyptian armies. He healed the bitter water at Marah. In light of what they had seen, they could have chosen to trust God for water. But instead, they grumbled. But God was gracious and provided for them in spite of their unbelief. God gave water from the rock. In all of these situations, they had a clear choice. They could choose to focus on God’s faithfulness and be filled with anticipation, or they could focus on their fear and be filled with anxiety. That kind of testing continued all the way through the wilderness.
5. Rephidim: Amalekites attack
Also at Rephidim, the Amalekites attacked. The Amalekites had been ambushing the stragglers and the weak. (That’s still Satan’s strategy. He tries to get people isolated. When you are isolated, you become vulnerable. You should always be connected somewhere.) But God again showed His goodness. Moses sent Joshua to lead the army against the Amalekites. As the battle raged, Moses went into intercession. He climbed to the top of the hill overlooking the battlefield, raised his hands, and prayed. As long as Moses held up his hands in prayer, the Israelites won. But when Moses grew weary and put his hands down, the Amalekites began to win.
Aaron and Hur saw that Moses was too weary to keep his hands up, so they got on either side of Moses and held his hands up so he could continue in prayer. Moses built an altar to the Lord. He proclaimed there the name of Yahweh Nissi—“the Lord, our Banner”—“for hands were lifted up to the throne of the Lord” (Exod. 17:16, NIV). Moses was setting an example for the people. He was saying, “You don’t have to murmur and complain. You can lift up your hands to the Lord, and He will deliver. He will war with you. He will give you victory. He is a miraculous God and will be your rearguard as well as lead you forward.”
LEARNING THE LESSON OF THE WILDERNESS
In all of these situations, it’s important to see what God was doing. I believe there were several things He wanted to accomplish during this time. He was trying to teach Israel His faithfulness. They could count on Him to provide.
He was trying to build into them a response of faith. When a new situation arose, He wanted their first response to be one of faith in Him. He was testing them to see if they would reject fear and simply choose to trust Him. The problem was, they never learned. Because they didn’t pass the test, they were ultimately not able to enter the land of promise. When you find yourself in the wilderness, you always have that same choice. You can trust in God’s faithfulness and be filled with anticipation or you can give in to fear and be filled with anxiety. You can remember what God has done in the past and choose to believe He will provide again or you can focus on your problem and grumble in unbelief. You can lift up your hands in praise and commit your life to Him or you can throw up your hands in despair and try to find your own path. You always have a choice. And the choice you make determines your future.