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Editor’s note: Our next Online Bible Study is just around the corner! Now and Not Yet by Ruth Chou Simons. We’re going to dig into the tension of the now and not yet we all experience and see what God says and how faithful He is to us throughout. We’re starting September 9th, so grab a friend and sign up today!
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I’ve lived the majority of my life in the arid climate of the Southwest and have known both the beauty and severity of the desert. I love the desert! I gained a new perspective on the desert after traveling to Israel, though. Troy and I, along with our two oldest teen sons, joined a few of my author friends and others in the publishing world on an intimate trip led by Arie Bar-David, a messianic Jewish brother in Christ who was much more than a tour guide — he truly wanted the faithfulness of God to come alive for us. And it did. (It’s not every day you get to visit the ancient ruins of Masada and hear your tour guide say: “When I was a child, my class was part of excavating this site. I moved those rocks you see there.” Or when pointing out the cave in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, says, “I was in the Israeli army, and one night during conflict, we hid in that cave right there.”) My dear friend Ann was writing a book about God as Waymaker, so we also spent intentional time in the desert — riding camels and sleeping in a tent. I experienced the Judean desert that hosted forty years of wandering for the nation of Israel and marveled.
David described the desert in Psalm 63:1:
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
A dry and weary land, indeed.
And the hardest part?
The desert is not a season; spring is not on its way. At least, it doesn’t appear to be.
Some of us are on a right-now journey that feels like continual longing, continual thirst, and endless need. It feels like wandering in the wilderness.
In the Old Testament, we read of the forty-year journey God’s people, the Israelites, took in the desert due to their disbelief and disobedience even after God led them out of slavery in Egypt. While some deserts are the result of waywardness (like Israel experienced), oftentimes we find ourselves in parched and weary places unexpectedly. For some, it’s the wilderness of a chronic illness, a lifelong battle, or a life circumstance that feels like an endless desert with no oasis. For some, the desert is a spiritually dry place you wish didn’t exist. A barren place that tempts you to doubt and fear. A place that reads only lack and loss instead of freedom and flourishing.
The Israelites knew this place of wandering well. The account of their time in the desert isn’t a story about us, but it is a picture of the heart of God for those who wander in the wilderness of waiting, wanting, and feeling restless for more. The desert was supposed to be a short piece of the journey on their way to the promised land, but forty years later, it became a picture of God’s absolute provision and deliverance. His character on display in the desert was a constant reminder to a doubting and self-reliant people:
- since God was faithful in the past, He will do what he says He will in the future.
Have you ever wondered about what God was really after in the desert? Let’s not forget, forty years of wandering in the desert happened after God’s miraculous parting of the Red Sea. The Israelites had already faced the impossible and had seen God make a way right through walls of water to their left and right, taking them safely to the other side and out of reach of the pursuing Egyptians. The Israelites had witnessed miracle after miracle and were promised a land filled with milk and honey, and they were ready for it. But when it finally seemed to be their time, they found a not yet. They would not yet receive the blessing of the promised land. Not yet flourishing, not yet settled, not yet fully satisfied.
Why the desert? Why not straightaway to the promised land?
Because God was after their hearts. Their trust. Their belief. Their faith. And their obedience as a result.
The desert proved to be a powerful place of purpose for God’s people.
Do you remember how He provided for them in the desert, even when they grumbled and complained? God provided for them daily, with manna and quail to eat, clean water, and His protection and guidance. But notice that His provision was meant to lead them to dependence and awareness of His presence. It was meant to bring them to greater trust in God instead of their own resources.
The Israelites wanted to get where they were meant to go, but God wanted their hearts to be where they were meant to be: with Him alone. In Exodus 6:7, God told them,
I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
Each and every way God met the Israelites in the desert was for the purpose of showing them that they were secure in His care. That they need only to surrender their self-sufficiency and believe God to be who He claimed to be. To trust that He would do what He said He would do and, in response, obey Him because they trusted Him more than they believed in their own ways.
It’s easy for me to question the Israelites’ ability to trust God, to follow His commands, and to stop complaining in light of all He’d already done. And then I look at my own life and how I respond to my desert wanderings. Oof.
Forgetful of God’s faithfulness and quick to assess my situation and to believe unequivocally that I will not survive. That’s often the way I roll.
Tell me I’m not alone.
In my defense (and in solidarity with the Israelites), it’s hard to stop measuring outcomes by the resources you possess when you’ve spent much of your life believing your striving will get you where you want to go. It doesn’t.
- So the desert teaches you what you might not quickly learn otherwise.
God allows us to feel barren desperation in the desert so that we might run to the oasis of His provision. We want His provision and the relief His blessings will bring, but we don’t want the wilderness that teaches us about our great need for Him.
We want to trust, but we don’t want the doubts that lead us there.
We want to see God provide, but we don’t want the insufficiencies that reveal His faithfulness.
We want greater faith, but we don’t want the unknowns that pave the way.
We want deliverance without the desert.
But God deliberately designs deserts to draw us to Himself. It’s only natural that we’d want out of the desert as quickly as possible. That job that isn’t life-giving, the dearth of meaningful friendships, the spiritually dry season, the wasteland of shattered dreams and unmet expectations. Get me out of here!
It can feel like the desert itself is the source of the pain, but, in reality, the desert often serves to reveal a heart issue: what we think we can’t be happy without. In other words, sometimes the desert reveals the comforts, idols, and treasures we lean on for sustenance.
I’m writing this book a few years after the global COVID-19 pandemic, and I think it’s safe to say that, at its height, the pandemic felt like a wilderness full of loss, chaos, confusion, and isolation. For many, it was a wilderness that revealed what we live for, depend on, and can’t be happy without.
If you found happiness in friendships and staying busy with social engagements, this unexpected desert threatened that happiness.
If you looked to your achievements and work for fulfillment, this harsh desert ushered in feelings of purposelessness. If you needed approval from others to feel worthy, this was a desert that left you unsure and exposed.
Anxiety, fear, and hopelessness were natural responses, but the global pandemic also revealed the smaller idols we often look to in our comfort but can’t find in the desert.
On the cusp of entering the promised land, Moses impressed this very lesson on the hearts of God’s people:
And He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. — Deuteronomy 8:3
And Moses’ warning to the people for when the “terrifying wilderness” (Deuteronomy 8:15) was no longer their reality should be ours as well:
Take care lest you forget the Lord your God... Beware lest you say in your heart, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” — vv. 11, 17
The lesson we learn from the deserts of our lives is that we truly don’t live by bread alone. Or any other comfort, satisfaction, or earthly good. Our sustenance comes only from the Lord.
The desert may be unwanted, but it is purposeful.
Hunger that leads to true satisfaction. Desperation that leads to dependence. Desert that leads to the promised land of God’s deliverance. God meets us in the desert.
God isn’t waiting to meet up with you in the not yet of the promised land; He wants you to find Him faithful today.
That’s because God’s desire for His people — for us who are His children now on account of faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus — is to be our God. And for us to be His people. This is at the heart of God’s redemption story.
But what if He seems silent right now? What if the desert isn’t temporary?
I hear you, friend. While so many of our not yets will be revealed in time, many of life’s right nows will continue on for a lifetime. I won’t pretend to know all that you might be going through and what unwanted right nows you are facing. And I can’t promise any of us, including myself, that the best is yet to come, but perhaps this is the very heart of what I long to share with you on this journey:
We can press into all that is not yet or may never be in our circumstances when we meet the God who is transforming us right now. Because He has promised to one day change everything that is unsettled.
The hope we have in the desert is the assurance that God will never leave us, never forsake us, and never send us to a place He isn’t going with us.
So what are some practical things we can do now when we’re still in the desert?
Excerpted with permission from Now and Not Yet by Ruth Chou Simons, copyright Ruth Chou Simons.
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Your Turn
Are you in the middle of a not yet season? Have you maybe forgotten God’s faithfulness? Have you assessed you situation and believed unequivocally that you will not survive? You’re in good company! God has so much to teach us during this desert! Join us for the Now and Not Yet OBS — sign up today!! ~ Devotionals Daily