Preparing a path and the next chapter

My mind had drifted for a moment duringthe sermon, when I heard these words and snapped back to attention, “Adventpilgrims on the way to the manger must pass through the desert where John ispreaching. Are we preparing a straight path to our hearts by resolving to trustJesus alone . . . ?”

These words hit me in the heart as if attachedto an arrow with my name on them.

Jerry had been preaching about John theBaptist and his words in Luke 3, “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Preparethe way of the Lord . . .’” John was in a literal desert when he said thesewords, but we can often find ourselves in a metaphorical desert. Providentially, we had recently been listening to Ray Vander Laan’s teaching on desert.In my notes, I’d drawn a big box around this statement, “Desert is a place to shapepeople for the next chapter of their story.”

If we find ourselves in that metaphoricaldesert, it can feel the opposite of preparing for the next chapter. Itsometimes feels like the end—dry, hot, and dusty. No water, and only ascorching sun beating down, seemingly no way out.  It’s hard to remember that ifGod has allowed it, he desires we call out to him and wholeheartedly submit. Sooften, we’re just thinking about relief.

The way of the Lord is in the humbledheart and the bowed knee, a reckoning with all that would stand in the way of absolutelytrusting the One who humbled himself to become like us.

The next chapter after the desert is oftengoing to involve a pivot and a redirection if we are open to it. Life won’t bethe same. How could it be? But who would want it to be? We are looking for moreof what God would want to do because we want to be part of His story.

When Jesus met up with John in the desertfor baptism, it was the beginning of all God had sent Him to do.

The Psalmist writes in chapter 107, “Letthe redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those he redeemed from the hand ofthe foe . . . Some wandered in desert wastelands . . . then they cried out to theLord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.”

In Streams in the Desert, we find these words referring to desert-like times, "It is a period which always ends in certain triumph for those who have committed the keeping of their souls to Him, a period of marvelous 'nevertheless afterward ' of abundant usefulness, the sixty-fold that surely follows."

As the redeemed of the Lord, let’s tellthe story of God’s faithfulness even when we’re in the desert. That nextchapter is going to be amazing. 

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