Devotionals

---

AND YOU SHALL REMEMBER

“And you shall remember that the LORD your God
led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness,
to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart,
whether you would keep His commandments or not.”
Deuteronomy 8:2


Green pastures. Lush meadows. Still waters. Quiet streams. Mountaintops. Countless landscapes call to our hearts. By God’s mercy we visit and often dwell in the vast variety of these seasons of life with Him. But not too many of us crave the wilderness seasons. The real life-despairing, thirsty desert wildernesses that lay bare our soul. So why does God lead us there, or allow us to enter them by our own willfulness?

It is interesting to look at what God describes as His purpose for the wilderness seasons of life. We don’t have to guess. He tells us Himself. With specific purpose, God leads all the way through the wilderness season, regardless its duration. Just like God did for the children of Israel, He leads me. He leads you. Maybe not with a visible pillar of cloud or pillar of fire, but His leading is just as dynamic, just as dramatic. And just like me, they didn’t always follow, and certainly not with their hearts. But what was God’s purpose in leading them?

1) to humble them
2) to test them
3) to know what was in their heart
4) to know whether they would keep His commandments

His purpose in leading us is the same. It is fascinating to me that the process must begin with humbling. Making us face our attitude of self-sufficiency, and leading us to recognize that in ourselves we can do nothing. We were never intended to walk in our own power, in our own strength. God’s purpose was always for us to walk in union with Him, a reflection of His heart, the hands and feet and touch of His will. The humbling process, the place of beginning, will lay bare the other three areas of our heart.

The wilderness doesn’t allow us to conceal the truth about our inward hearts, even from ourselves. Everything is laid bare as we utterly cling to and depend on Almighty God. Does it come willingly? Do we do so with eagerness, with overflowing joy and gladness? Or do we resent the need for God’s intruding on our life? Does grumbling fill our days and nights even as the manna falls around us and the water flows from the rock, feeding our hunger and quenching our thirst?

Ashamedly, how like those children of Israel I am. Their heart is mine, and the desert reveals it. And more to the point, God knows it. Yet, He never withholds His love or ceases to meet our needs. He just keeps leading. His longing for our union with His heart moves me as nothing else does.

How differently Jesus stands out from Israel, from me. Philippians 2:5-8 lays it out clearly, “...Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”

How unlike me. How completely contrary to our soul’s adversary. We, mankind, bare within our being two seeds, both born, oddly, in the heavenlies. Seeds eternally at odds, with one another, with God. Humility and pride. Servanthood and a feeling of godhood. Obedience and self-will, self-determination.

My heart knows only gratitude to the unfathomable love of God that not only allows the wilderness seasons in my life, but actually leads me there. Never to tempt me to sin. But always to reveal the growing harvest from those seeds yet remaining in my heart. He knows they’re there. I deny their presence, until the wilderness lays it all bare. The wilderness where the heart that longs to walk with Him in undefiled obedience is forced to look in the mirror, and humbleness can once again be birthed from brokenness.



Almighty, Sovereign God, I can thank you now for the wilderness seasons of my heart. For Your love that leads me there. For Your loving touch that meets me there. Thank You for the hunger that consumes me in those places where there is nothing left to feed me, until desperate need drives me to take the manna from Your hand. Thank You that in the stillness of the wilderness terrain I at last can hear Your voice, can at last take its word into my soul and finally know Your wholeness fill the deep, empty aching that came before.




© 9 March 2005
DeAnna L. Brooks

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE