The Israelites in the Desert: How to Get Out Faster

“The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death”Exodus 16:3.

The reason the wilderness experience was so hard for the Israelites was because it was their actual present reality. To read the entire chapter and get context, click here.

They had a glorious testimony of God’s faithfulness behind them. Think the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, pharaoh and his army. And they had the magnificent hope of a land flowing with milk and honey ahead of them.

But these were not physical, concrete, tangible realities like their present wilderness experience.

If The Israelites in the Desert Would’ve Remembered and Believed. . .

I believe in order to get through present realities that are difficult and test our faith, we need to learn to do two things.

1. Remember God’s faithfulness to us in the past.
2. Believe the glorious promises He’s given us for the future.

Remembering God’s past faithfulness to us helps us to believe for the future. He did it before, so He’ll do it again.

I had experienced this personally. God had gloriously delivered me from severe emotional dysfunction. I used to have many traits in common with a particular family member who is mentally ill.

In fact, because of my obsessive/compulsive personality type, I probably would’ve ended up much worse than this person. But God had miraculously healed me. I had become emotionally healthy and strong. He had given me a sound mind.

I had really been transformed into a new creature. I wasn’t at all the person I was 10 years earlier. And there was no resemblance to the person I was 20 years before.

Loneliness, Anxiety and Stress

But my husband had just divorced me. As with the Israelites in the desert, God had spoken precious promises to me about the future.

However, my present reality at the time was one of loneliness and anxiety and stress and challenges. There was no hint of the fulfillment of the promises in sight.

I felt very much alone in the world. I had no husband, and my teenage kids were not around as often as they used to be. They were supposed to live with me 50% of the time.

But, to avoid conflict, I gave the house to my ex-husband. And since this was where the kids grew up, they were more comfortable there than at my place.

Not only that, but because my new home was on the backside of nowhere, they didn’t like to be there. They didn’t know anyone and there was nothing to do.

Add to that the fact that the 35-year-old mobile home I had paid for $7,000 (this wasn’t that long ago) had some issues.

The walls were infested with mice. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say if you left food on the table to go to the bathroom, it would have mouse droppings on it when you came back.

There was a hole in the living room floor just the right size for snakes to invite themselves in.

And one time a stray cat made his way in through the heating vent. You can’t make this stuff up, right?

The Israelites in the Desert and Facebook Friends

I wasn’t close to my family of origin and didn’t have extended family. I had church friends but to tell the truth, they weren’t much better than Facebook Friends.

The only time we hung out was on group nights. We had good fellowship when we were together. But I didn’t really feel comfortable reaching out to them at other times.

So, I was alone and lonely. And this was magnified in times of stress when I desperately needed support and comfort. I had just begun my first nursing job. It was stressful situation that lended itself to anxiety.

If you’re interested, you can read about this extremely stressful experience here: Fiery Trials and God’s Faithfulness.

An Ache, A Longing and A Pining

As mentioned, I only had my kids half the time and that exacerbated my loneliness. I had never lived alone in my life. I hated coming home to an empty house. And I felt unloved with no one to love in return. There was an ache, a longing, a pining that never went away.

So, my present reality was hard. And in a way, the promise God had spoken to me that it wouldn’t always be that way almost made it worse. He was going to make it up to me. Because there was no hint of that reality at that point.

So, I had glorious things behind me and wonderful things ahead, just like the Israelites in the desert. But my present reality was so hard. I needed to continually remind myself of God’s past faithfulness to fuel my faith in the future promise.

This was difficult because the good things to come were not yet “real”. They were only a hope and an expectation. Whereas my present situation was very “real”. It was my actual lived experience. It was concrete and tangible, whereas the promises weren’t.

But this was how I was learning to walk by faith and not by sight. And this is how you can learn it too.

That was years ago now, and I am starting to see the fulfillment of the promise the Lord had given me. The stray cats and mice are long gone. The ache, longing and pining are gone too. Now I have peace and am no longer lonely and alone.

The Lord has been faithful to His word.

To read another post, check out God’s Faithfulness: How Does He Express It?

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