Have you ever come to the place where you set your heart to seek God? You say “I want to go deeper and further in the Lord” “I don’t want to be lukewarm anymore” God begins to answer your prayers and move in your life. Suddenly in the midst of it you find yourself spiritually dry in a wilderness or desert place. Your thoughts are full of more questions “Why am I here?”, “Does anyone really care?” “Is God displeased with me?” “Is my life used by God to be a blessing to anyone to make a difference?”

These types of questions usually come when we feel alone in the wilderness. The things we had hoped for or expected seem empty. We begin to evaluate our lives and ask how we have failed God. I have also been contending with some of these nagging questions “Where is God in this time of trouble?”  My body and mind have been fatigued from repeated emergency room trips, hospital/nursing home stays, supportive equipment, supplies, medications, appointments, therapies and procedures. Notwithstanding the persistent humiliation of a life of dependence with an inability to give back. My mind continually fights a barrage of accusations urging me to give in. To quit trying to survive this recluse life, tube fed on formula with rounds of lung infections that compromise my ability to breathe. My physical body alone is seemingly powerless to survive several near death experiences. Truly, it has been the spirit that has sustained me on my bed of affliction.

“The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness, but who can bear a broken spirit?” Proverbs 18:14

A voice came to me during these days of weakness and suggested to me, “if you want to go to heaven, you can go there now!” This sounded good to me. I could finally find rest from all the struggles of life.  I reasoned that God’s promise to me of healing must have been a spiritual promise only to be fulfilled in heaven and not on earth. I was so captivated with an escape to heaven that I told my wife I would be going very soon. She discerned the deceiving spirit immediately and asked me a question, “did God tell you something different about your promise?” I mused on that question for a moment trying to recollect why I had come to this conclusion. Had God really given me consoling grace and dying mercies? Had the Holy Spirit spoke anything different into my soul than what I have clung to for more than 13 years? With decisive revelation, I replied to my wife, “NO!” God had not changed his mind! I had been lied to by the enemy who had worn me down (Dan 7:25 KJV).

One night not too long ago, as my wife was getting me ready for bed, I was tired of the daily battle of my will in this weakened state. I broke down weeping and said to her “I just want God to hug me”. I had become so overwhelmed by the inability to communicate my struggles with anyone having walked this path in faith. I knew only God in His Word could help. I knew I hadn’t been forsaken by God and He would still fulfill His promises to me, but I needed a hug of reassurance! Despite years of service to the Lord, many church services and conferences, momentous times of faith, theology and scripture I thought I understood, devotions and prayers; even the scriptures that I confessed were not reaching me at this time. It was as if it were all a distant tale and wishful thinking. With my plea and need for the comfort of God, my wife with her eyes brimming with tears, bent over as I sat on the side of the bed, wrapped her arms around my frail body and gave me a big, confirming hug. As she withdrew she tenderly and confidently said “That was from God”. My Father had kept her with me throughout all these years and He used her again to express His loving care.

God wants us all to know and be assured that His everlasting love will never leave us; we are the object of His love. The confidence of love is where we must begin to face any trial placing our trust on the rock of our salvation, Jesus. He has paid the penalty for sin, we can come to His throne of grace to find help in the time of need (Heb 4:16)….Oh yes, we have many needs! “Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Ps 34:19). Through His faith impartation, we can rise above our trial and be at rest in the midst of our storm. He will give us His grace and mercy to overcome. God will strengthen us for the battles we are in, showing us the way to victory. As we cry out to Him we magnify His Name above any situation. David said in Psalm 40:16 “Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; Let such as love Your salvation say continually, The LORD be magnified!” Each time we depend on our Savior to help us; we exalt His Lordship in the earth. Paul said in Philippians 1:20 “according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death”.

The wilderness experience is an impossible place for our fleshly nature because this is where we must die to the way of natural thinking. Only our spirit man can survive in such a harsh desert place being tested and humbled by the devil. God loves us unconditionally and uses the wilderness to strengthen and perfect us, causing us to depend on Him. Desert places are dry paths that lead us to new revelations and victory in Christ. These dry paths lead us through the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Jesus, our example, was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil (Luke 4:1-2). When he returned, he revealed Himself  full of the power of the Holy Spirit (vs.14).

“The poor and needy are seeking water when there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst. I the Lord will answer them; I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia, the myrtle, and the wild olive; I will set the cypress in the desert, the plane [tree] and the pine [tree] together, that men may see and know and consider and understand together that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.” Is 41:17-20 NKJV

What do we make of someone who has been given a dream or promise by God but experiences no evidence of that promise? When in the midst of trial or affliction with no end in sight, we can still have a testimony of God’s love and faithfulness although we may be mocked by the god of this world.

I wonder what Abraham was thinking when God told him at the age of 75 he would have the promised son and 25 years later Isaac was born. I wonder what Joseph thought 13 years after his dream while he sat in an Egyptian prison? Or Paul when he was stoned and left for dead at Lystra? How about the woman who had the issue of blood for 12 years or the paralytic man at the pool of Bethesda, who for 38 years waited for his chance to have a changed life. We meet many throughout the Bible who had earnest needs and were looking for deliverance and fulfilled promises to them, even in their lifetime.

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

These individuals hoped in the miraculous with an expectation of the faithfulness and mercy of God, despite the long periods of silence. I am sure that at times they grew weary or exhausted, losing heart and fainting in their minds. Even in the despondency of the psalmist of Psalm 88 knows to petition and cry out to the Lord although the psalm itself does not reveal his deliverance.

“My eye wastes away because of affliction. LORD, I have called daily upon You; I have stretched out my hands to You. Will you work wonders for the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise you?  Selah. Shall your lovingkindness be declared in the grave? Or your faithfulness in the place of destruction? Shall your wonders be known in the dark? And your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? But to You I have cried out, O LORD, and in the morning my prayer comes before You.” Psalm 88:9-13

Despite despondency in my own life, my spirit has been encouraged considering Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”.  This cloud of witnesses is a metaphor referring a great amphitheatre with tiers upon tiers of seats rising up like a cloud surrounding an arena full of runners that are in a race.[1] In heaven, these witnesses are in the bandstands cheering us on as in the spectators of an athletic competition. We as the contenders of life make every effort to overcome present discouragement while making strides to run the course set before us. The witnesses refer directly to those just spoken of in Hebrews 11 having gone before us testifying  from their own experience to God’s fulfilling His promises. Great men and women of faith like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Multitudes of believers throughout the ages have followed their example. Our relatives and loved ones are among them; moms, dads, grandparents, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and untold number of friends and acquaintances who have finished their race trusting God and are now filling  the heavenly amphitheatre seats cheering us on.

Hebrews 12:1b continues to exhort us to lay aside every weight and sin that so easily ensnares (or clings to us) to slow us down in our race. What we need is endurance; to finish what we have begun in Jesus Christ – a race that is set before us. Our race is before us and we must run it!  In Acts 20:24, Paul pictures himself as a runner who had a race to finish and nothing would keep him from finishing his race with joy. In that passage, Paul speaks of my race – he had his race to run, we have our own – but God calls us to finish it with joy; and that only happens when we look unto Jesus. The NAS Bible version translates this: fixing our eyes on Jesus. We run this race of faith as we look to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. He is our focus, our inspiration, our example and our prize.

Take encouragement, do not lose heart. Your race is not hidden from the Lord. Isaiah declares in Is 40:28-31:

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the LORD, The Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength.  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

 

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[1] Robertson, A.T. “Commentary on Hebrews 12:1

  Glennis and I  just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary! We were married in Steilacoom, Washington on September 1st, 1984. We  made our wedding vows at this time “in sickness and in health.”

My devoted wife has kept her vows to me and before God as being sacred. Glennis has sacrificed many of her own needs so that she could attend to mine as well as to our families, home and business needs. She is a beautiful illustration of the “bride of Christ” who has set her affections on the things of God. I am very humbled by her willingness to go beyond her own strength and to allow “Christ in her” to minister supernatural love and life to me and anyone else that she touches. Through our faith and love for each other, we have been strengthened in our marriage. As one, we have overcome discouragement and despair, with hope and opportunity. We see each day as a new beginning and a blessing from God. Together we know that through the power of love anything is possible.

                                                

                                                           Sept 1st, 2009