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August 25 - November 25, 2019
A. J. Gordon,
It costs self-surrender and humiliation and the yielding up of our most precious things to God.
It costs the perseverance of long waiting and the faith of strong trust. But when we are really in that power, we shall find this difference: that whereas before it was hard for us to do the easiest things, now it is easy for us to do the hardest.
But the Spirit must take Jesus to a private, desperate, and dangerous place to allow Him to be tested and tempered.
His presence must be tempted, tried, tested, and tempered,
so that they might learn to live dependent on God and not on themselves.
The wilderness is a training ground prepared by the Holy Spirit for those who desire to minister in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit may even permit a direct demonic assault upon God’s anointed, seeking to knock us out of our destiny, but this is all preparation—as we learn to understand our dependence on God and our obedience to Him, as we recognize and resist the Enemy’s assault on our own life before we rout him out of the lives of others. For Jesus, and for us, it is impossible to go on with God without first (and not just once) coming face-to-face with the powers of darkness.
But he is a better, stronger, wiser, deeper, and more stable believer for this encounter.
Joseph was an anointed and appointed leader, but spent years in his wilderness as a slave and prisoner before he rose to fulfill his destiny (Gen. 37—41), saving his people from famine.
but God had to prepare him for forty years in the wilderness near Horeb (Ex. 3:1) before He summoned him to lead Israel out of Egypt.
but they spent forty years wandering around the wilderness being prepared to enter the Promised Land (Deut. 29:5). David was God’s...
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Wilderness is a place where God’s people have less of this world in order to gain more of God.
Easter Lenten fasts developed in the church since the post-apostolic era are an attempt to build into our lives a place for God—a
wilderness where we may be humbled, honed, hardened, and made more holy. In the wilderness there
The Spirit may not lead us to a wilderness, but He may lead the wilderness to us.
In it he spoke of his depression, disillusionment, and sense of failure, his sense of being on the scrap heap.
Although it is a place of correction, pruning, and discipline, God is there in the desert. It is a place of unusual grace.
The desert is God’s gift to us—it is the way to more.
When God has given you the desert, don’t ask to be taken away from it, ask for a blessing in it—ask Him to give you also springs of water.
The wilderness is a place of favor for the faithful,
The deep things of God are learned in the fiery furnace of the desert.
It is here that He digs deep wells of
His Spirit into our...
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receive more of God’s Spirit only as we empty out more of our self, and this ta...
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The more comes by an intensification of the existing presence of the Spirit within us as our desperate hunger leads to a full surrender of our ambitions, affections, possessions—everything to His Lordship. Often the more comes through a crisis brought on by a period of intense personal consecration and dedication to God.
Here was a man who had sought and fought and caught the more of God!
biblical paths and patterns, you
No wealth but that thou givest, no good but that thou blessest,
