letters from the wilderness

There's nothing out here.  Nothing.  No sounds even, besides the blowing wind.     The wind...

Normalcy seems like a distant dream ~ as though life with all its busyness and diversity has quietly taken wings and flown away; when, I do not know.  Though, not long ago.

I remember how it was when, many years ago, I went to live (not very willingly) in the Mojave Desert.  It struck me as being the most empty, forsaken place I had ever seen.  As far as one could see in every direction there was nothing but sand and scrub ~ and wind.  It took me a very long time before that I began to perceive a unique kind of beauty in that place.  At length, I became very fond of it.  Looking back, it seems as if loneliness was an intrinsic feature of the desert ~ as if, without a profound feeling of aloneness, that place would not have been the desert that it is.

Having lived there for a while; and, having experienced all that God brought me through while I was there (which involved a great deal of suffering): makes me feel, whenever I think about it, that the desert is a place I cherish and even long for ~ but never want to go back to.  I can't explain that.

There is another kind of desert, a very real kind of wilderness ~ in the Spirit.

It almost feels as though I'm sharing something too intimate, by relating any of my thoughts and feelings about that place in the Spirit ~ a place which I feel, very definitely, I have been for quite some time.  I do intend not to say too much.  In fact, the only reason I'm writing anything at all about this is because I suspect that some of you may be experiencing something very similar ~ and, like me, you're (at some stage in the process of) trying to figure out what is going on with you:

"Is God angry with me?  Am I under judgment ~ for...what?

"Am I so unworthy that God cannot, thus He will not, use me? 

"Am I going through something like Job did? when that God ~ for His own mysterious reasons ~ allowed Satan to destroy everything but Job's very life?  Is this meant to be a trial of my faith? 

"Is the spiritual battle that is raging so within my soul ~ because, we're in the End-times?  (Of course, that must be part of the reason!)  But is there something else about myself that needs to be...fixed? 

"Why does it seem that I'm the only one that is going through this?  Is there something wrong with me?"

In 1 Peter 4:2, we read: "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you."  James, too, began his brief letter by urging: "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations...".  The writer of the book of Acts stated very matter-of-factly that "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).

I get it.  Don't like it.  But I get it.  I must confess, though, that laying hold of the "count it all joy" part, is still challenging me.

I don't mean to imply anything at all about myself, by what follows.  Nevertheless, it is in the Bible, for a very good reason.

A number of godly men spent a good deal of time in the desert (also called, the wilderness).  Take Saul (who later became known as the apostle Paul), for instance.  All we are told in Scripture is that after he met Christ on the road to Damascus, Saul went alone into the desert of Arabia ~ for three years.  When Saul first went into that desert, he (an intellectually gifted Pharisee) very well knew the text of Scripture.  But when, after three years, he came out of that desert, he then understood the meaning of Scripture.

Before him, there was John the baptist.  We are told nothing concerning when, and for how long a time, John ~ the only son of Zacharias and Elizabeth, disappeared, alone, into the wilderness.  John had long been in training for the (Jewish) priesthood ~ which was not only his prerogative by reason of his parentage; it was furthermore John's duty to serve as a priest.  But there came a point, at some time during his youth, when that John turned his back on all of that (as I have discussed at length, here).  It was not the Jewish priest-school that molded John's character; but it was in the wilderness, that John became a mighty prophet of God.

I could speak of the inimitable Elijah, and of Moses ~ both of whom, evidently, spent the better part of their lives in a wilderness of some sort or another.  Those two great men of God were by no means the only ones whose training and discipline came at a high cost to themselves, in some desert place.

Then there was the Savior himself.  If for no other reason (at least, in my mind), Jesus was compelled by the Holy Ghost to go into the wilderness, for to put God's own stamp, as it were, upon the fact that no one ~ not even the man Jesus ~ could walk with God in power, in any kind of public ministry, without the spiritual discipline that comes only by having to overcome the devil in some kind of a wilderness experience.

I never saw any doves or bunnies in the desert.  Only venomous snakes, and scorpions, and coyotes, and the like.  What rabbits do live in the desert, are a special breed (jack rabbits).  (I once tried chasing one of those jack rabbits, on foot.  After he toyed with me for a while, he simply kicked in his afterburner and left me standing in a puff of dust.  It was humiliating.)

The desert is a lonely, dangerous place ~ inhabited by (what the Bible refers to as) "wild beasts."  It is no wonder at all that Jesus encountered the devil himself in such a place as that.

God has no intention of allowing his servants to skirt the devil's haunts.  We're not here to sidestep the devil.  We dare not reproach Christ, nor our own selves, nor yet the body of Christ, of which we ourselves are members, by so much as tipping our hat to the devil!  We're still here (since being born-again) in the world for the very same purpose for which Christ himself was manifested: "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8).

We are absolutely certain! that we are now within reach, in this generation, of the return of Christ.  We should then know that we are even now living in a very special period of time: a time when the the powers of hell are doing their utmost to try, if by any means, they may at least forestall, if they cannot avert, their certain, impending doom!!!!

Don't you see?  After who knows how many millennia?...the devil has come to the end of his road.  He has but a very, very short time.

And I do believe that God is right now doing a very deep work to prepare the faithful servants of Christ ~ for a battle that will never be forgotten, throughout all of eternity.

I was 19 years old when I joined the Army.  I packed some clothes, along with a duffle bag full of personal items (radio, books, etc.), and off I went on the bus to bootcamp.  What a rude awakening I got when I stepped off that bus: "Line up!!" the drill sergeants yelled at us:

"Attenn...chun!!  Now, take those bags you brought with you and turn them upside down!!  Do it NOW!!    Hurrright face!!  Forward ~ march!!"

There in heaps laid not only the most prized possessions of a dozen or so young men including myself.  But our past lives laid there in heaps, too.  We would never be the same.  A bunch of long-haired teenagers got off the bus, on that day ~ on our way to become men.  Men, whose purpose was to train for war.

Welcome to the desert, O friend of God.  Don't mind the loneliness.  Oh, and those serpents and scorpions: they won't hurt you ~ if you don't turn your back on them.