Debrief in Krygyzstan held a big surprise for me.
Little did I know that it had been chosen as the location for my departure from a fourteen year Wilderness season with God…
And I came out kicking and screaming.
But I’ll pause for a moment and explain what I mean by “Wilderness”:
The Wilderness is a season designed to reveal to us who we REALLY are, and who God REALLY is to us.
It is where we will lose all our confidence in ourselves and in our own abilities and strengths to direct our own lives. Instead, we are given the invitation to depend on God as sole provider for all we need. (Luke 4:3,4) In the Wilderness we are loved and seen at our worst and most broken points, which leads us into our most authentic experience of what was accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection. It is here that we develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit and learn a form of deep, heart-wrenching worship called: lament; where we learn to clearly see who God is in our most dire circumstances, obtaining the knowledge that the breakthrough will eventually come. (Luke 4:5-11) He becomes our only true Father and Comforter.
In the Wilderness we deal with the reasons we compromise with God (a.k.a. delay our obedience). We give up our selfishness in exchange for surrender – no longer procrastinating behind questions of: what if, maybe, and, or but – instead saying simply: “Yes”. We learn to live in joyful obedience and submission because our rebellion has been broken. We withhold nothing from God’s reach, learning to become okay with not always understanding why things look the way they do. In fact, we stop asking “why” – choosing to trust in God’s goodness to us instead. In the Wilderness, we pass from faith into knowledge of God because He has captured our heart. (Luke 4:12 and Song of Songs 8:5)
People who don’t successfully go through the Wilderness will continue to be: driven, unable to rest, are easily tired out and exhausted, in need of constant approval, are still thirsty.
They didn’t learn who He was for them.
Back to Krygyzstan and our Debrief in Karakol.
It was July 8th.
Thirty-three years ago, I made my first appearance in the world…twenty-nine years later – divorced and alone.
And now, on this meaning-filled day, I was being led out of the Wilderness…and I didn’t like it.
There have been two significant and very different wilderness seasons during those fourteen years. The first came with a warning to prepare me. I was told through a prophetic word that I was going to go through some really hard things, but it was the best way for me to learn. What ensued was a ten year, deeply painful Job season. I battled depression, anxiety, panic-attacks, suicidal-thoughts, physical pain and adrenal fatigue, transitions in married life, job-loss and lay-offs, forfeit of my dreams and identity, moving homes, manipulation and verbal abuse, two car accidents, being sued, adultery, divorce, death…. There were so many nights where I would lay on the floor crying out to God to take my life…that I couldn’t hang on a moment more. But He’d always come in, pointing me towards Truth so I could endure it…building strength and knowledge in me before understanding.
He was not the source of all this hardship, but He was allowing the Enemy to test me.
This season ended very abruptly. On the night we decided the marriage was over – the Lord reached down and put me on a new path…and directly into a Luke 4 Wilderness which included four years of counselling, inner healing, prayer, tears, surrender, two years at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, and huge amounts of physical, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation. Everything that had been spoken and planted and torn apart during those fourteen years was being realigned and refined. My heart was again being rendered.
I can say that I was my own worst enemy upon entering the Wilderness, and it was during this time that God brought me to a place of deep brokenness – I learned to depend on Him, hear His voice, trust in His goodness, see from His perspective…He became my everything.
In the Wilderness, I came face to face with one of my deepest desires: Intimacy.
The depth of which I longed for intimacy cannot be found anywhere in this world…
And the state of my heart at the time was unable to contain what I most longed for.
My Wilderness journey was designed to reveal God’s thoughts, desires, and intentions towards me…and destroy all that was keeping me from receiving it.
Developing that kind of intimacy takes time and can’t be rushed.
God wanted to reveal to me a Love so strong that I couldn’t live without it.
And that’s what I got.
I wouldn’t say my journey is complete in this area…
But I am beginning to see that all that He invested in me during those fourteen years needs an opportunity to be walked out – a time of practicing what I now KNOW to be true.
I left the Wilderness kicking and screaming in Karakol because it had become a place of safety and comfort. I loved the hidden-ness and the undistracted space with the One I love. I had nothing to left to prove and I lived free…but truth be told – being seen in this “new skin” outside of that secret place intimidates me….
However, I know it is time.
In part two of this blog I will share what I learned while in the Wilderness –
But for now I hope to offer up this encouragement:
No matter how painful, dark, lonely, or overwhelmed you feel in this dark night of the soul…know that He calls you into the Wilderness to speak tenderly to you, to give you joy, intimacy, connection, to make a covenant with you, to cover you and provide for you, to align you with His heart in Peace, to show you love and compassion, and to be faithful to you. (Hosea 2:14-20)
You must come out of the wilderness different than when we went in…
Because we must win the battle over ourselves to get what we most desire –
His heart.
