The Transforming Wilderness

Have you ever had a lasting impression that later proved to be inaccurate?

Two weeks ago, my daughter Melanie and I went up to New England for my 40th Gordon College reunion. My memories of college were more negative than positive…it was a difficult four years for me, as I felt homesick and out of place much of the time. So I was hesitant to head back to the scene of all that hard.

But this past summer, I had had the joy of seeing one of my college roommates, Jude Hulteen Gotrich, in North Carolina, for the first time since graduation. We laughed and remembered and went straight to the deep, like not a day had passed since our rooming together. Our spiritual connection was unaltered. It was the highlight of my summer. And it had me wondering if maybe college wasn’t so terrible after all.

Melanie and I spent the night before the reunion at the home of Meryl Brennan Mailloux and had dinner with another friend, Lynn Vogt Adams (and their husbands). Again, it was a wonderful time of reconnecting and laughter. I had forgotten just how much I loved these dear friends. And all the good times at Gordon began to flood my memory once again.

Why had college left such a bad taste in my mouth for all those years? Why was my primary memory of it as being so hard? Then it dawned on me. Those four years I went from child to adult. And…

Growing up is hard.

God is always at work, maturing us into the image of Jesus. He does much of that work in the wilderness. Think of Joseph, Paul, John the Baptist, and even Jesus. While in the wilderness, the barren harsh surroundings that tried the soul, God was at work in them, readying them for the job that lay ahead.

Think about Moses. He’d led the first 40 years of his life in a privileged position, part of the pharaoh’s court, a life of plenty. But God had bigger plans for him. After a terrible incident ending in murder, Moses fled into the wilderness to escape the consequences of his act. And it was there, as he tended sheep and lived as an alien in a foreign land for 40 more years, that God brought him to a place of readiness for the task that still lay ahead.

Now Moses was highly educated, having gone to the best schools and having enjoyed the best training available in the ancient world. No doubt he had been groomed to be a leader in the most powerful empire of its time. But that was head knowledge. And God was going for his heart.

So God used the humiliation, the hardship, and the insecurity to bring Moses to a place of readiness.

Because a great leader is one who clings to God. And you don’t cling when you have it all together. God pulled the rug out from under Moses to show him where the real rock of his foundation was. Or rather Who.

We can see how effective it was—when we compare Moses at 40 and Moses at 80. Forty year-old Moses jumped in to rescue a fellow Hebrew from being beaten to death. Stephen the Martyr explained: “He supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand…” (Acts 7:25). Moses’ sense of righteousness was so strong, he murdered the persecutor. But He had jumped ahead of God, worked to rescue in his own strength. He had a lot to learn.

Now, forty years later, we see a different Moses. Eighty year-old Moses responds to the call of God (from the burning bush) with “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

The grandson of the great pharaoh is hardly recognizable now. Why? He had been transformed from self-important and self-confident into a humble man ready to hear the voice of God. To lean on His great strength and power to get the job of redeeming Israel done.

The wilderness is HARD. No one looks back on the wilderness experience with fond memories.

But it is in that place that God brings us to an understanding that we, in ourselves, are inadequate. It is in the wilderness that we turn to God in humility and look to Him for provision and strength. And that is the exact place where God wants us to be, because it is in our humility that His power and glory can shine.

God gave Paul quite an education the day He appeared to him on the road to Damascus. Suddenly Paul had understood that Jesus was the Messiah that was promised in the Scriptures. But God wasn’t finished with Paul’s transformation: “Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me…for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

Yes, the wilderness can be unpleasant. It is not a place in which we would choose to dwell. But…

It is in that place that God does His best work in us. And eventually, some day, we will be grateful for our time in that desolate place. It will be so worth it in the end.

If you liked this post, you may be interested in hearing my two messages, given this fall at New Hope Chapel, on the remarkable life of Moses. Part One: A Birds-eye View of God on the Move, and Part Two: The Transforming Work of a God on the Move.