Navigating the Wilderness: Transformation Through Brokenness
Identifying the Wilderness
When I was 4 I was placed in foster care because my dad had left before I was born and my mom was an alcoholic. There was abuse, loss, trauma, and acute loneliness. I felt lost and abandoned and so, so small. My entire life was a wilderness until I was in my early twenties. I didn’t know how to navigate the desert of my existence. It was invisible to most people around me and I didn’t know any other way to live until I found a home in the church and people began to show me what the wilderness was teaching me, how God was meeting me there, and how he would show me the way out when he was ready to.
I am NOT saying that God makes us suffer so we learn lessons. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t believe that God takes people from you or gives you a disease so you can draw closer to him. I believe that God is present in the suffering and he will redeem it for your healing and his glory.
We are living in a fallen world which makes it a wilderness in itself. We suffer the effects of that original betrayal every day. There are wildernesses and deserts of our own making through defiant disobedience and lingering sin patterns we refuse to repent of. In the Bible God did use the wilderness and desert as a punishment for disobedience, but he was there with them, giving them sustenance, protection, and direction.
Some wildernesses are circumstantial. It may be a family crisis. A relationship seemingly broken beyond repair. It could be years of shame oppressing and isolating you. It could be a secret struggle you are terrified to confess. It could be a desert of mental illness and chronic pain.
The Wilderness As Invitation
Wildernesses abound. They may differ in size and location, but chances are, you will come across one sooner or later. At times it feels like forty years of punishment, but what is important to remember is that God speaks in the wilderness. He has led many people into it for a variety of reasons. The desert, even in its emptiness, can be a place of intimacy, a place of prayer, a place of temptation, and victory.
Jenny Phillips writes, “The wilderness has many functions. It serves as a place of barrenness and hunger, source of nourishment from God, a location for God’s testing and revelation, and a context for the transformation for God’s people.” Maybe some of us hear him better in the desert.
Read the rest over at The Mudroom!
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