Worship in the Wilderness
Wilderness seasons. Times of trial. Being refined, cleansed and dying to oneself and taking up your cross. These seasons are critical in the life of a follower of Jesus.
It is human nature to fight wilderness seasons. It goes against what most people desire; comfort, luxury and ease in life. But wilderness seasons are everything but that. They are challenging, exhausting, painful. They squeeze you, purging what God does not desire to be there. Burning out the impurities. Sometimes we don’t even recognize we are in one, they catch us off guard and we cannot recognize it while surviving through it. Sometimes we see them coming, staring us in the face of our short term future. Other times we recognize in the middle of what is going on. We are trudging through and then all the sudden we have a moment of recognition, or the Holy Spirit reveals to us what is going on…God is cleansing us! God is preparing us for a greater measure or something different that He has planned for our future!
As followers of Christ, we should rejoice when these seasons come. When we see that our heavenly Father loves us deeply and is cleansing us, bringing us closer to the character of His son, our beautiful savior Jesus, and purifying us of the things of this world that don’t belong or that we cannot take with us to the next chapter in life.
But rejoicing is not always what happens. Especially when it catches us off guard. Sometimes because of the hardship we can harden our hearts, question God’s goodness or even get mad at God. Not understanding that what we are going through is a sign of His great love for us. It is the most beautiful thing our heavenly Father could do for us, refining us, restoring us back to who He created us to be, to walk in greater resemblance of His son and to be the true light of the world. But if we are not in a heavenly mindset, if we are focused on things other than Jesus, if we are consumed with worries or concerns of this world, then we will not be able to recognize the beauty of the season. Instead of the season being a wonderful part of our walk with Christ, it will turn into the season in which we gave up, let go of our faith, and decided it was too hard.
Ladies, we cannot fall into this trap. We must be rooted in the goodness of God. The agape love of God. We must pursue Him in the good times, give thanks to Him in every circumstance, and be in scripture everyday. These things renew our minds, these things give us a heavenly perspective. They help us sit above the worries and problems of this world and allow us to ride the waves of life. They allow us to endure hardship, to push through persecution, to love through mistreatment and to walk as Christ did.
I believe there are few things more beautiful than going through a wilderness season, fully surrendering it all to God, and allowing Him to refine you. Giving Him all your burdens, and watching Him as He takes over and removes the junk within us. Coming out of the season clean and beautiful, ready to walk in the new purity, the new assignments, the greater authority that you have now achieved. Not through your own work, but by surrender and belief and an unwillingness to give up on God!
So let’s rejoice! Let’s refuse to give up on God. Let’s put our focus on Him and what His plans are for us, and let go of our desires as we walk through the easy seasons in life, as well as the wilderness seasons.
