In the Wilderness: When God Doesn’t Keep His End of the Bargain
“And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. . . For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills. . . and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Deuteronomy 8: 2-10 selected.
God works with Moses to liberate Israel out of oppression, through the wilderness, and into the promised land. The wilderness isn’t just an annoying inconvenience to be quickly dispensed with. It is essential to the acquisition of the promise.
To read the passage for context, click here.
On Our Way
Anytime we believe a promise in the word of God, and therefore act on it, we are headed for the promise land. We’re on our way to the fulfillment of that promise, and the harvest that will come from our seed of faith.
But, in order to get to the promise land, we have to go through the wilderness, which represents a contradiction of that promise. This is true no matter what promise we’re standing on, in any arena.
If, for example, I decide to start giving more because my faith has been ignited by verses like:
“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully” 2 Corinthians 9: 6. Or,
“Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you” Luke 6: 38.
I will see the fulfillment of these glorious promises, but not before I go through the wilderness. Before I experience an infusion of more than enough, I will instead experience what seems to be the opposite.
Expect Losses
I will appear to lose income or resources or have an unexpected increase in my expenses.
I have experienced this firsthand. When my father died, I received a big chunk of my inheritance at once. And I gave away 33,000 in a single day. I did it in faith, anticipating a rich reward.
But the very next morning, my ex-husband called and announced he wanted to rescind my child support for our teenage daughter, since I now had an income (I was not working while in school).
At first, I protested, but as soon as I closed my eyes to pray, I knew I had to do whatever was necessary to maintain peace. This amounted to a loss (15 years ago), of 6,000/yr.
Then that evening, I checked the mail only to discover that my car insurance company was raising my rates. This was the first time they had done this in the several years I had been with them.
I knew the blessing was coming, but this is a good example of the wilderness on the heels of the promise.
A Long Wait in the Wilderness
I don’t think I experienced any significant monetary blessing until about a year later. I found out my dad had another life insurance policy that no one knew anything about that amounted to 293,000.
The other inheritance from my father had been divvied up between me and my four children. But I was the only beneficiary on this policy. And since it was a life insurance policy, no taxes were owed.
This policy was a complete surprise to everyone, including the woman who had been appointed to oversee his estate upon his passing. Even though this policy had been taken out years before, the Lord knew. . .
Another example is when I was learning to overcome my fear and anxiety related to my job as a nurse. The Lord gave me a specific game plan to deal with it and had helped me do my job with progressively less fear.
To read about how the Lord helped me with this, click here.
But then despite the fact that I had gotten a job that was much more demanding than anything I had done previously, I managed to control my fear. It was a real spiritual victory.
And I believed as long as I worked to overcome my sin, the Lord would work to overcome my incompetence. But as it turned out, I was incompetent. (I later discovered I had undiagnosed hypothyroidism).
When God Doesn’t Keep His End of the Bargain in the Wilderness
In spite of the fact that I was “seeking first the kingdom of God” (Mathew 6: 33), it appeared that “all these things” were not being added unto me. I ended up quitting, and my boss couldn’t open the door fast enough.
For several months, I was confused about this. I didn’t understand why even though I kept my end of the bargain, God didn’t seem to keep His.
But then one day out of the blue, it dawned on me. This was a wilderness experience. A contradiction of God’s promise. The Lord did fulfill Mathew 6:33 as I continued to seek His will and righteousness.
And I now have my dream job as a public health nurse for the County. I love everything about it. It’s four days a week, and remote.
There’s something about doing your work from your patio in the sunshine with the birds singing that doesn’t feel like work. It’s one of the few things in my life that I have no complaints about.
The Requisite Wilderness
But you can’t get to the promise land without going through the wilderness.
When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they were experiencing a contradiction of God’s promise to them. It was about as far from “a land flowing with milk and honey” as they could get.
In fact, it was a dead, dry, barren wilderness that couldn’t even sustain life (Exodus 15: 22-18: 27).
What we do while we’re in the wilderness determines whether we ever make it to our promise land.
If we’re short-sighted and decide that God didn’t keep His promise and go back to Egypt (shrink back on our faith and give up the promise), we’ll never make it to Canaan.
Even if we don’t go back but demonstrate by our bad attitude that we don’t believe, we still won’t make it. We must continue to believe we’re going to get there even while the hot desert sands are whipping in our face.
To read another post similar to In the Wilderness: When God Doesn’t Keep His End of the Bargain, see God’s Goodness, How to Taste It.