Deserted By God?

Have you ever been deserted by God? No I am not talking about the leaving and abandoning kind of desertion experience. In fact, scripture tells us emphatically that God will never leave us or forsake us.

I am talking about, perhaps, a time in your life where your spiritual journey with God landed you smack dab in a season that could only be characterized as baron and dry. Where your closest traveling companions might be a camel or two and the only viable vegetation might be a smattering of random cacti. You know like a desert.

Just as the double meaning for the word desert might have caught you off guard, maybe you find yourself teetering as well when suddenly you find yourself roaming alone thirsty for a spiritual drop of the living water. Maybe these thoughts have gone through your mind. “What did I do wrong?” “I must be in spiritual warfare.” “Maybe I am out of the will of God.” “How do I get out of here?” “Maybe I should turn back.”

While deserts can come from our own doing, God also can divinely ordain a desert encounter for us as well. Take the Israelites for example:

“Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
                                                                             Deut 8:2-3

I think the primary lesson God wants us to learn in our desert experiences is not all that different from what He wanted the Israelites to learn. If you planning on traveling through life with God, then you better be ready to live a life totally dependent on Him.

Did you notice that He brought them into the desert to test them? He wanted to see if they would obey Him. I wonder, do you think that maybe the all knowing God of the universe might have known how that would have turned out? Let me assure you, He did. I think He just wanted them to see that they couldn’t obey Him. God stripped them of their spiritual self sufficiency.

This passage tells us that God allowed them to hunger so He could show them, that not only that He could, but would provide them sustenance. I think He didn’t just want them to know that He was a miracle making God who could provide them food from heaven, but I think He wanted them to come face to face with their inability to depend on whatever physical self sufficiency they might have been harboring.

God wanted to teach them while in the desert a vital lesson. The only way they were going to make it in their land of promise, which was a land of plenty, would be through an innate acknowledgement that every thing they have and are comes from God. They need to get the lesson that whether in want or plenty they could only survive by humbly keeping themselves dependent on Him.

Take a moment to read this familiar desert account.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter cam to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
                                                                            Matthew 4:1-4

Do you notice anything familiar in this passage? Jesus is quoting our verse from Deuteronomy 8. Do you think that Jesus could have easily turned the stones into bread? Of course. So why didn’t he?

“I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.” John 8:28b

Jesus’ life while on this earth was characterized with total dependency on what God directed Him to do. If we are to be conformed into the image of Christ, maybe our desert seasons are necessary as part of our growth as servants of the living God. Maybe we too are led into the desert so that we can learn that all our sufficiency is in God and not in ourselves.

Maybe God’s intention is for us to live within the confines of His ability and not our own. Maybe the only place to learn that is in a desert.

What are you depending on? Can you identify an area of your life where your reliance is centered solely on your own ability rather then God’s? Can you recognize a specific situation that you find yourself striving in with very little fruit to show for it? Are you overly frustrated with things? Could it be that you aren’t fully submitted to His will and outcome in that area? Could He be desiring to set you free from a stronghold of self-sufficiency?

I believe this passage teaches us, that God wants us to learn how to be totally dependent on Him, and not just to display His Lordship in our lives, but to help us as well. God knows how hard life is, He proved that by sending the Holy Spirit into our hearts to help us live for Him. I think the more we give up our self sufficiency and allow the Holy Spirit to take over, our lives get easier and His name is glorified.

“Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
                                                                      2 Corinthians 3:5-6