His key learnings:
- God will always take care of His people in the wilderness
- If you remain in the wilderness, you will eventually die
- The wilderness has but one goal: to sift us, to reduce us, and to strip us down to Christ alone
- The wilderness is a symbol of new beginnings
- Leaving the wilderness always involves a cost
After the children of Israel exited the treasured city of Egypt, they quickly traveled to Mount Horeb. They then wandered in the desert for forty long years. Why? Because of their unbelief (Heb. 3:15-19; 4:1-11).
The trip should have only lasted eleven days (Deut. 1:2).
The wilderness is temporary, unless you choose to build a home there. God will eventually make a way out of the wilderness. But when that day comes, your faith will be tried. Leaving the wilderness may come at an obscenely high price. It is for this reason that many do not leave it.
I strongly believe that God’s living quarters cannot be built in the wilderness. All that happens in the wilderness is temporary. God’s goal is the Land of Promise. (I am speaking spiritually … Egypt, Babylon, the Wilderness, and Canaan are all shadows that point to spiritual realities for the Christian.)
Granted, the tabernacle of Moses was built in the wilderness. But it was a movable tent. It was highly temporal, and it was headed toward Canaan to find permanent rest.
Read the rest of Viola's post to unpack the key learnings above.
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2 comments:
I hate reading stuff like this, Rick. Not because it's not true, but because it's pitched as applying at all times and in all cases. And that's simply not reality. Some wilderness experiences are only resolved by death or a miracle of God. Yet what are we to do then if the miracle does not come? Then we never leave the wilderness this side of heaven.
I love Viola's writings. I truly do. I think he gets it better than most Christian writers/speakers today. But the truth is, all of human life is the wilderness. Some things resolve and some don't (short of the two resolutions I mentioned). Each of us must face not one but many of the kinds of experiences Viola singles out. For some people, that string of "wilderness" experiences never ceases; life becomes one difficult thing after another.
I find Viola's illustration about the Hebrews in the wilderness to be awful, too. When applied to wilderness experiences, his example becomes the words of the Pharisees as they wonder what this man or his parents did to be born blind. Sometimes, the wilderness is no one's fault. I know a pastor who ran over his own toddler while backing out of the garage to go to a church meeting. No one was truly to blame; it was a genuine accident. How can we apply Viola's illustration here? It doesn't work.
I think that sometimes the best response of Christians to wilderness experiences in other Christians is to talk less and be more available to listen or just be present. The problem of the wilderness is that no one else wants to go into someone else's wilderness and just be there with the wilderness dweller. In our society, almost no one outside of a paid professional is willing to do that. And that's a tragedy.
Dan - I'm glad you commented as you did. I almost didn't post this because like you, I didn't see it to be true 100% of the time.
But in this example, unlike you, I thought Viola was correct in his analysis.
Our small group just went through a series of studies on a variety of wilderness experiences. I didn't send them a link to this because I didn't want to take them backwards to thinking there's a one size fits all perspective here. Yet I posted this because in some cases of wilderness experiences, Viola counsel seems wise.
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