11. Wilderness Manual– Wrap up

Posted on July 17, 2019 by aner327

Fellow Pilgrims
– – I am wandering like you, following the cloud of His leading, and I see that this is the Pilgrimage that He calls us to.
– – In the Torah, we see in Deuteronomy 8:2-3 that God is searching out man’s heart. He knows that the heart is the seat of life, and He is seeking to save the life of His creation. In the Torah, we see our hearts, as in desperate need of His salvation.
– – In the Prophets, we read of men like Elijah who followed God’s lead, and did mighty works of power by the Holy Spirit. In 1 Kings 17-19, we read of Elijah’s encounters with God, and the ways God sustained him, led him, used him, and preserved him.
– – In the Gospels, The fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets was Jesus, who showed us all how to navigate the wilderness in Matthew 4, and Luke 4. If Jesus went through the wilderness by the leading of the Holy Spriit, must not we also follow Him even here? It is here we learn dependence on God, trust in God, and devotion to God. O you who wander far from Home go with Him, and your home will be near to you each moment.
– – In the Writings, we see Paul’s exhortation to believers to learn from the Wilderness stage. In 1 Corinthians 9:24-10:14, He calls us to run, to have self-control, to learn from the failures of Israel, and to flee from idolatry.
– – I wish I could say more. More could be said, but my words are not the ones you need. You need His Word: the one word that sustains you. For more on the Wilderness stage, consider this writing exploring Jesus’ time in the wilderness.
– – Finally, dear reader, I commit all of this to Him. I pray He lead you, feed you, and prepare you for the great things He wishes to accomplish through you. There is no way around the wilderness. By the strength of God’s heart, may your heart make it through these challenges and move onward into the fullness of Glory in the presence of God. In Jesus name,
Amen.

Your brother

10. Wilderness Manual– Coming up Short? (32)

Posted on July 10, 2019 by aner327

Reuben and Gad were going to settle in before crossing the Jordan with all the rest, but they assured Moses and the people, “We will build sheepfolds for our livestock, and cities for our little ones, but we ourselves will be armed ready to go before the sons of Israel until we have brought them to their place.” (Numbers 32:16-17a) This was good in the sight of Israel.

Principle: So long as Jesus hasn’t returned, we are in a wilderness where once there was a garden. There is a tension of settling in here as a pilgrim does on his journey, but then he keeps moving. The Wilderness teaches a person that he must be whole-heartedly for God, and also teaches him that even when he gets out of the wilderness, he will need to keep moving. The battle wages ever onward until the Promise of God is fully taken possession of, and the church can walk unified in Jesus name, representing God rightly in the world. Reuben and Gad both settled in, and committed to the task. This is to be our heart as we leave the wilderness stage. While we are here on earth, the question remains in all that we do, “Are we coming up short of the fullness of God’s promise?”

Application: If you have gotten this far, you have what you need: God is Enough, and He will bear His fruit in your life, and though you fail, He will bring about the zeal of heart to accomplish His work in you. This exhortation I give you. Don’t stop short of the Kingdom in all the Lord gives you to accomplish. Let God be your companion, your value, your everything. Take care of your families and your possessions, and then go forth and lay hold of the Kingdom of God, which men of violence take by force. Only stay with Him. He brought you to the wilderness, and through the wilderness. Go and be with Him as he leads you out of it.

Warning: Do not settle for less than the Kingdom, or you will lose everything. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Numbers 32:23 There is no room in the economy of God for a partial-hearted person. As the Lord Jesus said,

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me, for whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.” ~Luke 9:23-24

9. Wilderness Manual–Sin and Zeal (25)

Posted on July 3, 2019 by aner327

Principle: After a time in the wilderness, being scraped down to the heart that has chosen the goodness of God, the journey back to what some call ordinary life is filled with danger. God has brought his vessel through the fire and now the test is to see how it responds to a foreign, destructive, and once beloved presence called Sin. The response of the heart prepared for God, is a response of zeal against it.

Many have a zeal against sin, but it is from a place of self-righteousness. “I am better than this they say.” On the other hand, The one who has been through the wilderness, who has walked with God, and tasted of His holiness will have a completely different perspective of sin. It is a righteousness based on God not on self. Sin is not only evil, it is worthless. It is not only death, it is killing. It is not only wrong, it’s unthinkable! The heart that burns against God for sin cannot understand this perspective. The heart that burns for God against sin cannot see otherwise. It is all consuming zeal that earned Phineas a perpetual priesthood. It is this all consuming zeal that turned God’s wrath away from His people.

God is One. He is not less than One. We in heart are not One, we are divided and varigated, and compartmented. Sin has fractured us like a mirror designed to mirror God’s glory, instead we splinter it and His image is marred. It is when we are whole that God recognizes Himself in us, and His integrity proves himself to be true in response to the truth in How He made us. This is why David said, “To the pure, you show yourself pure, but to the crooked you show yourself twisted.” Psalm 18:26

Application: Emotions stir in the melting pot of the heart that allows a person to change for the better or the worse. Let your emotions be excited against sin, even as they are allowed to fully enjoy the goodness of God, and you will find your heart more whole. Let nothing temper or cool your zeal for God against evil. And let your zeal be even as Jesus’ zeal: a zeal to seek and to save the lost. Coolness will mend no cracks in your heart. Also, take action against sin, so that the emotions of your heart have oxygen of freedom, and fuel of action to keep glowing and blowing to purge out evil, and to bring light to the dark and cold world enslaved to sin.

8. Wilderness Manual–Three Victories but One Redemption (21)

Posted on June 26, 2019 by aner327

The outward situations are growing in intensity. Arad, Amoriates, and Bashan all fought against God’s people and lost, because of God’s power at work in Israel. They have learned much from the wilderness, and God’s power is effective in creating the impossible right before them. But the heart of the people is still ungrateful.

Principle: The power of the Spirit is simultaneously able to create powerful victory on the outside, while disciplining the weak failure on the inside. God does so when he is using beloved sinners and sinful image bearers to enact his purposes. His way of producing outward results is staggering, but even more profoundly moving is His way of training his children up close. When the people are complaining, God sends fiery serpents and they bite them, and then in the midst of the discipline God provides the cure. Do they have the heart to look to the one who wounded them to see His love and purpose for them?

Application: Do not count your outward victories as evidence of God’s approval of you. Beware your ingratitude, because it will keep rearing its head. When you fail, keep staring God in the face as you experience his discipline. In his face you will find the truth and love that makes you right before Him again. Expect God’s work to be evident beyond you, but let your primary focus be clinging to Him. He is your cloud and your supply.

7. Wilderness Manual–Contention and Holiness (20)

Posted on June 19, 2019 by aner327

His chisel is sharp, and painfully accurate. He will test and prod and prove the heart, and there is great confidence to be gained in the Lord by his thorough preparation. No confidence in self has any room. Our frailty as human beings is inescapably exposed in times of loss. Right between two losses Moses has his moment where his heart came up short.

Principle: The people of God are God’s mission, and they have continuously pushed against him. Here Moses gives into his own ungodly anger and disobeys God by yelling at God’s people and not glorifying God by obeying Him. The Holiness of God requires completely Him shining through. And in our anger, and our wretchedness we will smear God’s good name through our rash and self-effecting actions. The self responds to situations according to its own perspective. This was Moses’ folly when he struck the rock instead of speaking to it. The self is ever-present as our greatest enemy that must be defeated daily, and the time in the wilderness will make this abundantly clear in the loss, the tragedy, the difficulty, and the weakness of this stage. Self-effecting– anything done that is based in self, of self, for self– is the very useless thing about a person that God is determined to keep chiseling away until he can be used. If the self is allowed to remain in power, we run the very painful risk of coming out of the wilderness to a blessing we can see from a distance, but not partake.

Application: Keep fighting the battle of putting yourself to death daily, so that you do not step out of the blessing and power of the One who is using you and preparing you for more. This is done through actively choosing God’s will over your own. One way to do this, is by writing out your will for the day, and then laying it down before God in prayer saying, “not my will, but Your will be done.” If you blow it, repent and return to God, and see what He will do with you, and let Him be the one to determine the consequences for your action. Beware self-inflicting punishment on yourself for when you blow it. God is holy, He is the best judge for how to make a person useful for His purposes. And every wrong thing that is done will still be woven into His plan. When contention arises, keep the self in check, through prayer and humility. No matter what else may be happening right in front of our eyes, the work of God in holiness is what is at stake, and that is what really matters in every situation. Will you maintain your integrity to God’s holiness despite all the contentions that rise around you?

6. Wilderness Manual–Fruit (17)

Posted on June 12, 2019 by aner327

If you saw a stick one day lying on the ground that had no fruit on it and walked past it, you would probably not think much of it. But if you walked by the same stick the next day and it was bearing ripe fruit, you would wonder the source of life: Where did it come from? Jesus said in John 12:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit.” At this point of the wilderness, we are coming up from the bottom level. The promise of life is coming through the death of the wilderness stage.

Principle: Numbers 17:8~ “Now on the next day Moses went into the tent of the testimony; and behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted and put forth buds and produced blossoms, and it bore ripe almonds.” Thus, God proved his choice and validation of Aaron’s ability to represent him. Aaron was far from perfect, he had made plenty of mistakes, but God’s purpose was more important than Aaron’s mistakes. God had chosen him to be a vessel, and the fruit of the wilderness grows on limbs that have been cut off from their worldly supply. Such fruit only God can grow. The principle of the Wilderness is this. Only when a heart is fully set on God does it bear God’s fruit. A tree bears earthly fruit because it is of the earth. But a heart who is planted in God bears heavenly fruit, which is miraculous and is the beginnings of the rewards of the Wilderness.

However, you’re not out yet. The flesh is going to hate this. It will not be satisfactory to your sense of self. When Israel saw what happened, they were fearful for their lives. The Holiness of God had been proven among them in the death of Korah, and the vindication of Aaron. Their sinful hearts were rightly fearful in the presence of a holy God. So will our fleshly nature in light of the holiness living within us.

Application: By now, if you’ve gotten this far, and you have learned the previous lessons of the wilderness, you can expect the fruit of your heart planted in God: righteousness, self-lessness, and power to persevere and do good in the face of many tangible evils and difficulties. Walk according to God’s commands, and keep on rejecting anything that vies for space in your heart. Only the heart that is set on God can be whole. Ways to do this: worshipping God, walking with God, going aside for God, fasting, anything that is done purely for the enjoyment of God. The more fully your heart is set on God, the more fruitful for His Kingdom you will become. This will bring no comfort to your fleshly desires to serve yourself. The sin in you will need to be kept at bay in the members of your body.

5. Wilderness Manual–Enough (16)

Posted on June 5, 2019 by aner327

In the sci-fi movie Ender’s Game, all of the students in the preliminary training program receive a probe in the back of their head that lets the instructors see through the children’s eyes. Before they let a person go to battle school, they take out the probe and send them home, making them think they have failed. It is wisdom to see the quality of a person after they have failed to see what they will do once their opportunity to succeed is removed. In the movie, Ender is discouraged, but he proves that he is still the right person for the job, and he is allowed to go on to the next stage.

Principle: Korah and the Levites are feeling done with this wilderness journey. Not only have they left their comforts behind, but their promised future is cut off from them by their own failure. They are stand against Moses and Aaron in Numbers 16, and Moses and Aaron, very humbly appeal to them, and rebuke them for their opposition against God. The part of this rebellion that grieves my heart is in verses 8-9

“Hear now, you sons of Levi, is it not enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the congregation of Israel, to bring you near to Himself, to do the service of the tabernacle of the Lord, and to stand before the congregation to minister to them.” ~Nu 16:8–9.

We are now at the half-way point of the Wilderness and it is here that the deep test must be faced.

The heart of rebellion is rejection of God. The heart of rebellion is hatred of God. The most holy people in the congregation of Israel had been blessed with the chance to be near to God, and how did they respond? “We don’t care. We want the promised land.” The Wilderness is where you learn for real, “Is God alone really enough?” Because in the wilderness, you will have nothing more. This is a decision of the heart one cannot make half-way. Either God alone is enough, or he is not enough. “Not enough” has looked upon the beauty and blessedness of God Himself and counted it as a small thing compared to something else. It is perhaps the greatest insult to God there is. It is the heart’s equivalent to an affair, cheating on God. God is rightly angry, and he swallows up the rebels with earth and fire.

Application: Is He alone enough? This is the foundation. This is the “real question,” “the real test.” Come to grips with the loss of past and future. Lay everything out that is precious in your heart: acceptance, authority, power, hope, relationships, significance, happiness, possessions, all of it! And then ask “If I have just God, and none of these things at all, would that be okay?” Be honest. So long as you cannot say yes, you can’t make it through the wilderness. Your heart is currently like one of those who needed to wander in it for 40 years until their corpses fell in the wilderness. If this is you, do not despair, God is greater than your heart, and he can give you a new heart with a new spirit to want Him alone. Pray and ask Him for it, and keep asking until He is indeed enough. May God give you the grace to be fully devoted to Him.

4. Wilderness Manual–Fear of Failure (13-14)

Posted on May 29, 2019 by aner327

Fear of failure is the a deadly two edged sword to the spirit of a man or woman. On forward edge, a person retracts from putting forth his full strength, for fear that he will be utterly destroyed. On the backward edge, the person refuses to accept his failures, for fear that he will miss out forever on what their fear on the forward edge has cost them. Both are edges of the same sword held in the grip of a person who is desperately trying to maintain his own pride in himself. Once, I did sloppily on a musical composition project for school which I believed God gave me to do, because I was afraid I would utterly fail. It utterly failed. My reaction was, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” and proceeded to fail at getting it ready again until I had to give it up. It remains to this day one of my most shameful moments as a composer, and as a follower of Christ, and it nearly ended my desire to write music ever again.

Principle: In Numbers 13-14 Israel went right up to the promised land, and sent Twelve spies to search it out. Ten said, “It’s beautiful, but we can’t do it.” Two said, “It’s beautiful, and we can do it!” The people believed the Ten, and the four who remained (Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb) fell on their faces and pleaded with the people, but the people got ready to stone them with stones. Once more God shows up, and he is so angry with his people, he tells Moses that He will restart with Moses, but Moses intercedes, and God relents from what He is about to do. He says this to Moses in Numbers 14:21-25~

So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; but indeed, as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it . . . turn tomorrow and set out to the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea.”

It took a different spirit to be allowed to enter fully into the promised land. Because God is seeking for His glory to fill the earth, He cannot allow those who preserve their pride by fear to enter into the blessing of His kingdom. This is why the Lord requires that we follow Him fully, and this is another thing the wilderness is designed to teach us: to follow the Lord fully.

The people of Israel are devastated, and they try to go up and take their possession anyway, but Moses tells them not to because God is not with them. They go anyway and many of them are slaughtered.

Application: You will fail. Let it humble you. Do not preserve your own dignity or pride or self-sufficiency. Do not take power into your hand to do what you need to succeed to do. Instead, Remember what Zerubbabel needed to learn in Zechariah 4:6, “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the Lord.” Your failures will be plentiful and consequent. Let them strip away your pride, and look to God for how He wishes to accomplish His Victory through you for His kingdom. Only then can you follow Him fully by His Spirit’s power. I am fairly confident that His humbling of you in the wilderness is the only way you can learn this because the Wilderness will prove your sin and utter powerlessness, and God’s unfathomable power.

3. Wilderness Manual–The Siblings (12)

Posted on May 22, 2019 by aner327

The Family may be God’s first institution, but since the fall it is far from perfect. My older sisters and I had a pretty good relationship, managed well by my Mom and Dad, but growing up I still felt looked down upon or pushed to the side, or left out. One of my favorite lines from a TV show called “Home Improvement” is where Jill, a psychology student, asks her husband, who claims to be an expert in child behavior, “Okay, honey, what causes sibling rivalry?” Tim, her husband confidently answers, “Having more than one kid!”

Principle: The work of God in the wilderness will go deep into all of the things that have shaped you into who you are: Family being one of the foremost. In Numbers 12, Moses’ two older siblings Miriam and Aaron oppose Moses because of the woman he married. They make a statement which seems totally rational in the realm of Sibling Rivalry, “Has God spoken through Moses only? Has he not spoken through us as well?” The Logic of sibling equality does not work in this stage. Family will not be able to understand what is going on, nor provide clarity as to what God is up to. I believe this is a part of God’s proving realities that run deeper than the blood ties of family and the family’s communal and relational role in shaping a person.

God heard the dispute and called them outside the tent of meeting. Moses had said nothing in response, (according to the writer because he was the most humble person there ever was.) God explained to Miriam and Aaron that Moses was not just their brother, he was also God’s servant. Therefore they should have thought twice before speaking against him. This logic reorients the whole family relationship to what God is doing in each person’s life, instead of what the family thinks is best in relation to itself.

Application: Don’t lean on your family for everything you need in this wilderness stage, and take their advice with a grain of salt. In Deuteronomy, Moses will show that the lessons God is teaching you cannot be learned from the family unit. Instead, be humble: regard each person as those whom God must lead individually, and look to God for His vindication in His timing. Beware the sibling rivalry need to be as special as, or more than other family members. It is a self-trap from which God would love to extricate you.

Wondercano

The music of memory; the soul full of wonder; the testimony of Jesus

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