Photo by Annie Spratt
“I remember… how you loved me and followed me even through the barren wilderness.” – Jeremiah 2:2
Do you remember as a young child, the joy – or perhaps fear – of exploring new places? I recall more than once as a kid getting lost somewhere. What may have started as blissful happiness turned to fear when I realized I was lost. This is always a gut-wrenching feeling of uncertainty for an adult, let alone a young child.
A little later in life, at the young age of 20, I had to walk back to my campsite from a small town convenience store on the lonely outskirts of a state forest primitive campground. It was late on a moonless night. The two-mile trek on a narrow and winding, hilly road with thick woods on both sides was haunting. I wasn’t even sure of the way back, but was sure that any second a wild animal would attack, or an ill-intending stranger would cross my path. The terror that was felt in that deep darkness can’t adequately be expressed. Filled with uncertainty about what might lay ahead of me on that petrifying journey, I remember continually and silently crying out to God to be near, to protect and to guide me.
Wilderness experiences are definitely full of demoralizing uncertainty, which in turn results in insecurity, fear, doubt and anxiety. They can bring out emotions we rarely experience, and an urgency in prayer we don’t often express. Wilderness experiences like the ones we personally recall have been around as long as humanity.
We see the beginning of the wilderness experience dating back to Genesis chapter 3. There in the Garden of Eden, God’s instructions were questioned and challenged by the first couple. As a result of their disobedient act of free will enjoying the forbidden fruit, the two were banished to wander the uncertain unknown, outside of their idyllic garden paradise. (The permissive will of God and free agency of man are mysterious things).
In Jeremiah 2, God tells the Prophet Jeremiah to convey His longing for His chosen people as they desperately cried out to Him many times after escaping Egyptian captivity into the treacherous wild. The late English Presbyterian minister Matthew Henry provides a glimpse…
He brought them out of Egypt with a high hand and great terror… through a vast howling wilderness… – Matthew Henry commentary, https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/mhc/Jer/Jer_002.cfm
Even those closest to Jesus during His earthly life struggled with surprising depths of uncertainty and subsequent insecurity in the wilderness of life. In fact, can you even name a person from Biblical history that didn’t struggle with harrowing, hope-defying and even terrifying challenges to their faith? I’d like to know which one, if you have one in mind. Every one of them, without exception, came to recognize and rely upon the certainty of God in His perfect timing, regardless of the wilderness that engulfed them.
The often literal wilderness in those ancient Biblical times remains with us in a metaphorical way. As such, wilderness is the ever-present backdrop of history, for every wandering generation of the human story – past, present and future. Every wilderness story often starts out with happiness, high hopes and expectation, only to descend into a range of painful emotions when we find ourselves lost and alone.
A new, happily-married couple drifts apart at some point into a wilderness of betrayal and unfaithfulness. Or a long-married couple in their later years unexpectedly face separation in death. A happy, healthy child suddenly spirals into a terminal illness. A young man or woman eager to find their partner for life, feel like they’ve missed their opportunity and are destined for a life alone. A career professional unexpectedly loses a long-term dream job. You can surely recall your own wilderness experiences. Times when you found yourself feeling lost, alone and pleading with God for rescue, protection, healing, and hope like you once enjoyed.
Today, I feel differently about these dire times of uncertainty. I believe that life itself is a wilderness. From that first step of life to the last, we are on a wild journey. There is always an unknown that causes insecurity and all the other painful emotions. If not for Jesus, we would truly be without hope in our wilderness.
Author Shelly Miller has captured a deeply profound truth that’s helped me to see how blessing is revealed in the uncertainty of the wilderness in which we live. The scriptural examples, as well as our own, bear this out time and time again. Let’s look at this insightful writing from Shelly’s book entitled Searching for Certainty – Finding God in the Disruptions of Life.
“Uncertainty provides rescue from being stuck in the familiar ways of life that keep us from moving forward into the purposes of God. Wandering into the wilderness of the unknown is God’s divine reorientation, from what we know in the present to what God knows about the future.” – Shelly Miller
This is why I find the scriptures, and faith, so compelling. In the uncertain wild, we as believers and followers of Christ have a personal relationship with the Certain One. Sometimes we find ourselves experiencing a heart racing range of dark emotions, and we cry out, even plead with God. And he hears. He always remembers how we have loved and followed Him, even through the barren wilderness. Yes, He is there with you and me. He is the covenant keeper, the perfect Father.
“Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations…” – Deuteronomy 7:9
If you’re still doing life alone without Jesus, the blessing in the wilderness will remain hidden until you’re finally willing to respond, to see and seek Him in the midst of it. Then the blessing is revealed with striking clarity. Your wilderness becomes the pathway that God uses to lead you into His will and to shape you more into His image. This is for His glory and your immense reward.
“And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” – Hebrews 11:6
Friend, never forget that your faith is not built on the terrifying uncertainties and deep insecurities of your wilderness. As you grow up into Him, your faith will become firmly rooted and established in the Word, the nature and the certainty of I AM –in the midst of your terrifying times. His nature and certainty is…
Infallible: incapable of making errors or failing. (Proverbs 30:5)
Irrefutable: impossible to disprove or argue against. (Romans 9:20)
Irrevocable: impossible to change back to a previous condition or undo. (Romans 11:29)
Immutable: unchanging over time or unable to be changed. (James 1:17)
Let’s return to Matthew Henry’s commentary on the Israelites’ freedom from captivity and into the vast howling wilderness, to marvel at the relentlessly wonderful mercy of our God who is indeed the blessing in the wilderness.
“In that darksome valley they walked forty years; but God was with them; his rod, in Moses’s hand, and his staff, comforted them, and even there God prepared a table for them, gave them bread out of the clouds and drink out of the rocks… The difficulties of the journey are thus insisted on, to magnify the power and goodness of God in bringing them, through all, safely to their journey’s end at last. All God’s spiritual Israel must own their obligations to him for a safe conduct through the wilderness of this world, no less dangerous to the soul than that was to the body.” – M. Henry
