“You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because you have made us for yourself, and

our heart is restless until it rests in You!”

– Saint Augustine of Hippo

When I first heard the call to the wilderness, I did not recognize it.  God was calling me away from the shallow shores of the familiar into deep water, but the call was clouded by my human thinking and my pragmatic approach to life.  I was aware of the growing spirit of discontent within me, though I would not have described it that way at the time.  Being pragmatic in my thinking, I had processed the call to mean that I needed to make changes with no eternal value, again, not the way I would have characterized it back then.  Though I had just downsized to a new residence, my outer man had decided that I really needed a fresh start, a new job in a new city.  To compliment this, I included a new wardrobe and a new car.  So convinced of this need, I remained unpacked for many months, just pulling things out of boxes as needed, all the while waiting for the big move.  I had convinced myself that a change of scenery was just what I needed to quench my spirit and there were several people in my life who encouraged this type of thinking, some of them believers.  Then I had my epiphany and I remember it distinctly.  I received a phone call from my lady friend who knew that I had taken the day off of work.  When she learned that I was at my office, she sort of reprimanded me in a very cute, but stern way, “go home, quit working on your day off.”  Without thinking, I replied, “but I hate it there.”  I recall thinking to myself, “uh-oh.”  It was my first “uh-oh” moment since the day I met her.  That brief exchange troubled me for several weeks and moved me to stop everything I was doing, because it revealed something in me that I had not allowed to come to the surface.  Concurrently, God had begun to show me through the emptiness of the changes I had made, that making external changes can never quench the thirst of the inner man.   It took me almost a year to realize that God was calling me to go deeper, to walk off the beaten path to meet Him in the wilderness of my interior.  God has set eternity in the heart of man (Ecclesiastes 3:11) as an invitation to communion with the Almighty, however the invite often goes unnoticed because of the noise and busyness we allow to fill up our lives!

During this time, I also read a book called The Critical Journey which was incredibly valuable in finding my whereabouts on my faith journey.  I cannot think of a way to describe it other than I had gotten stuck and my faith had become very mechanical, far from the organic life of being connected to the Vine (John 15:1-5).  The book describes this as “The Wall” experience.  As I began to contemplate the Wall, the Holy Spirit began to illuminate scripture to shape the conversation about to ensue.  The books of Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Job, Psalms, Haggai, Amos and several chapters of the New Testament were all part of this process.  The word ‘wilderness’ always moves my soul to remember distinct times in my life in which the life of the outer man was disrupted to move the inner man to be further formed in the image of Christ.  This is the process when God will set us apart to do further work in us to grow in holiness and to be fruitful in life.  Sanctification means set-apart and sometimes that can be literal and other times not, but it is always a time of heart surgery in which God opens us up to Him to expose the depths of darkness within for the purpose that Christ be further formed in us (Galatians 4:19). 

“The people who survived the sword Found grace in the wilderness—

Israel, when it went to find its rest.”

³ The Lord appeared to him from afar, saying, “I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.
⁴ “Again I will build you and you will be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel…!

Jeremiah 31:2-4

This is a time for The Renovation of Our Hearts.  I have previously written about a time of decluttering my mind and this was the beginning of that process.  As I would spend extended time with God in His Word, in prayer, in silence and in solitude, it was a deep time of reflection and taking inventory.  This is what some might call the Inward Journey or spending time in the interior.  For me, the analogy that comes to mind is an untended garden in the wilderness.  The soil needed to be turned to foster growth, weeds needs to be pulled, trees needed to be pruned and poison roots needed to be extracted.  I came to identify three key areas that God wanted to plow:

1) the weeds of innocuous brain clutter such as entertainment and television.  This led me to get rid of my television so that I would break the habit of coming home, plopping down and wasting countless hours watching things that added little or no value to my life.  This forced me to read, workout and have some quiet to hear what God might be telling me through His word.

2) My pruning was in stripping away distractions from time with God or that would cloud my thinking to not hear His leading.  Examples included political talk radio, books not associated with spiritual growth, reducing social media and limiting social activity.  I was able to prune the feeling of obligation to be at every church function and we had a lot of them every week.

3) Finally, the poison roots, false beliefs that I held as true that really distorted who I am.  This was hard because I had to train myself how to think, I prayed for great discernment and I had to practice taking every thought captive.  Most of the poison was rooted in my career, but spilled over to my personal life, the net result was to be prideful, less gracious, selfish, arrogant, and have a wrong view of money.  God would expose all of this through His word over many months.  I still catch myself grasping on to something that sounds good, sound practical, yet works against Christ being formed in me.

What God showed me through this process was that I had allowed this pragmatic thinking and pop-psychology methods (Colossians 2:8) to put distance between me and God through seeking to be independent (Isaiah 29:13).  Later on in this process, God would take me through the Doctrine of Vocation (Ephesians 2:10) which has changed the way I view the business world.  What I have learned is that by inviting God into my work (Colossians 3:23), doing it to honor Him (1 Corinthians 10:31), He has blessed my efforts and providing me with a platform to bring the gospel into the business world while granting me what is necessary to be successful.  My time in the wilderness was to get my priorities back to love God and love people, but first I had to get my own identity back which had gotten clouded by my pursuit of building my kingdom.  In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis identifies a tactic in spiritual warfare: “Prosperity knits a man to the world, and while he feels like he is finding his place in it, really it is finding it’s place in him.”  This is a truth that I lived and in my success, became a wandering sheep.  To me, the most scary thing about those years was that I never walked away from my faith and stayed active in church, but one baby step at a time would knit my to the world and compartmentalize my faith!

Responding to the call into the wilderness

When I turned open to Jeremiah 31, the scripture seemed to be putting into words a part of my faith experience that was so rich, yet I struggled to explain it.  In scripture, The Lord reveals Himself to believers in new ways that breaks them out of their routine faith.  We see this with Job in Job 42, Peter in Luke 5 and in Isaiah in what I like to call the Isaiah 6 experience as all three men would see their self-righteous heart that needed to be surrendered in the further dying to self.  These are all revelations in which the holiness of God shines a light on who we really are apart from Christ, our sin, our darkness, our unworthiness, and shatters the illusion that we bring something to the table that is of value to God.  It is a transparent recognition of what Jesus spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:3).  In this experience, it is as if we suddenly realize that He is our Savior and not our partner.

² You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. ³ He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.⁴ Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. ⁵ Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. ⁶ Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. – Deuteronomy 8:2-6

During my time in the wilderness, Deuteronomy 8 was a chapter that spoke to me in many ways on multiple occasions.  This was a time when God began a deep work in me and the Holy Spirit illuminated scripture in a whole new way that resonated deeply with the work God was doing in me.  Sometimes God will bring us to these places of solitude for many reasons, sin to purge, pruning, discipline, healing, or preparation for the next season of life as some examples.  I see that all of these were addressed during this season, or what I affectionately called at the time, my Season of Discontent.

So how do you navigate the Wilderness?  This is a time to get alone with God.  Get your Bible and your journal and find space.  I found that spending time with God in nature was much better than at home because of fewer distractions and I found it easier to quiet my mind.  In order to not spend 40 years in the wilderness, we need to quiet our minds and settle our spirits (Psalm 46:10).  A spirit of discontent will leave us fidgeting while God silently waits for our disposition to improve so He can show us why we are here.  This time can leave us feeling disconnected from God, but it is the disposition of our souls that is creating the barriers in our faith.  So what I am listing below are some things to consider during your time that I hope will provide encouragement and perseverance to stay the course.  God wants us to become conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29), and because God is faithful (Lamentations 3:23) and God has furious love for us (1 John 4:15-19), He will let us wander in the desert for 40 years if that is what it takes to get us to the High Places (Hebrews 12:3-13).  Below are things I learned that I trust will be helpful for those on this part of the journey:

1. Be Open: Do not put a limit on the time with God, but be prepared to have extended time, more than normal, maybe two, three hours or more.  For me, I would drive to a local park or beach and find a place without many people (Psalm 131:2).
2. Be Patient: As best as you can, do not force it.  Do not feel compelled to make this time “productive.”  This is the practical application of Psalm 46:10 in real life, so enjoy it and realize that you are in the presence of God (Psalm 63:1-3; Psalm 130).
3. Journal: You may have this time of solitude and have nothing to write in your journal and this could go on for days or weeks, that’s okay.  This was hard for me because I would open my journal, write the date in the top corner, then wait for the epiphanies to start flowing.  At one point, I had about two weeks in a row of blank pages, but this was part of my quieting process, something my personality was not accustomed to (Psalm 27:13-14).
4. Listen: When you pray, begin with silent prayer and listen for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes or as long as you feel led.  If you hear something that might be relevant to why God has called you out, jot it down in your journal and get back to prayer (Ecclesiastes 5:1-2).
5. Guidance: During prayer, I will often ask God to put a book or a passage on my heart and I will read that during this time.  If nothing is clear, then I read whatever bible plan I am already engaged in.  God’s word never returns void (Isaiah 55:11) and it is amazing how often I would open to something that would speak to me right where I was (Psalm 1:2-3).
6. Prayer: During prayer, address things that are heavy on your heart, perhaps they are the same things that are creating brain clutter and making it hard to quiet your soul.  For me, God revealed that I needed to admit that I needed healing and that process would begin with granting forgiveness, even to those who did not think they had anything to be forgiven for, I still found healing by settling that in my interior (Psalm 32:3-6).
7. Reflect: Take time to reflect and maybe ask yourself some hard questions.  Perhaps identify what things in your life are making you discontent, self-conscious, feeling guilty, feeling ashamed, feeling jealous, feeling prideful, feeling confused and so on.  For me, my first question was, “how did I get here?”  The answer was humbling and unfolded over several months (Psalm 42:1-8; Psalm 51:17; Psalm 69:1-6, 18-33).
8. Validation from God: It’s okay if no one understands.  Many of us are at different places on our faith journey, so don’t be alarmed if you are sharing your experience with others and they don’t understand or even begin to be concerned about you.  If you are seeking God, you are doing good.  This was an important lesson from The Critical Journey book because it helped me be understanding with people who didn’t understand.  Sometimes God calls us to do unconventional things outside of our routine faith and that can make people uncomfortable.  By way of example, getting rid of my TV troubled people.  It can take many forms, but you may need to tell people, “I would appreciate your prayers, but I don’t need you to understand.”  (Sidebar: I recently bought a TV after four years and have been able to enjoy it in a more discipline way). (Psalm 56:3-4, 8-13).

The result of this process has continued to be a deep communion with God and a grateful heart for where He has brought me.  My life looks completely different than it did 8 years ago, but He continues to shape and fulfill the desires of my heart, often in ways I have not imagined.  There is more to share, but I have written a lot to digest and process, so I will stop here for now.  For anyone who is feeling stuck in their faith, feeling distant from God, feeling discontent or trying to understand why God is allowing things to happen in  your life, I hope that this will provide some guidance to navigate this part of your journey.