the wilderness

I'm reading another fabulous book right now. My friend Rachel recently found this gem on the Lifeway shelves, even before it was said to release - divine appointment. She so graciously let me borrow this in our never-ending thirst for growing closer to the heart of our Lord. The title is, "One in a Million", written by Priscilla Shirer. The subtitle includes, "journey to your promised land", which so succinctly describes the parallel of the wilderness experiences of the Israelites of long ago, to the same journey we each traverse in our journeys.

The back covers states:

When you meet someone who lives, eats, breathes Christian faith, you want what they've got more than anything - their seamless intimacy with God, their prayer power, their spiritual stamina, their passionate sense of expectation, the kind that doesn't shrink into despair at the first sign of setback.

Bow badly to you want it? Enough to toss anything from your life that keeps you from being 100 percent His? Enough to allow God's spirit to bring radical spiritual change that might just scare you right out of your comfort zone? Enough to wait on God long and hard and invite whatever He requires to get ready for what's next?

That's how one-in-a-millions to do it.

This is quite a challenge ey? As I sat and soaked up the words last night, I simply felt compelled to share with you today a bit about the wilderness. Perhaps today, you are wandering, or perhaps you're just on the other side looking back... here's what God spoke through Priscilla:

It's awful easy to get disillusioned with God out here in the wilderness. It's easy to think He's forgotten you, doesn't care about you, doesn't love you. It's easy to start asking why you best isn't good enough to earn you at lease a little bit of relief from this constant upset and turmoil, from the choking dryness and dustiness.

But listen, you don't have to figure out the wilderness. You don't have to fix the wilderness. You don't have to explain to your church friends why you're going through the wilderness. Your job as a much loved, highly treasured child of God is simply to yield to the wilderness because it's often in the wilderness where are runaway desires can finally be boiled down to this: "One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple" (Ps. 27:4)

The wilderness is God's way of making us want the only thing that's really worth having.

The wilderness, my friend, is worth it.