0953 Fight Back - Wilderness Wanderings

Wilderness Wanderings

Wilderness is place of wandering. Wandering - traveling aimlessly from place to place; itinerant. Feelings fade. Finances get dry. Relationships sour. Experiences shadow. Doubts are amplified.

Be careful with your wants in wilderness.

Want - Weary - Whining - Wicked

Want - Waiting - Worship - Winning

Be hungry but not desperate. Differentiate between a bait and supply. Miracles, multiplication but I am willing to wait. Don’t try to turn stones into bread, turn complaining into thanksgiving.

The WARFARE of Wilderness

Dry place is between deliverance and dominion.

Demons go through dry places. Delivered go through dry times.

“goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none” (Matthew 12:43).

Moses. Israel. Elijah. Jesus. Paul and John

The fourth week of Basic Conditioning is known as Hell Week. This is when students train for five days and five nights solid with a maximum total of four hours of sleep.

The WIDTH of Wilderness The wilderness season can be stretched by complaining or shortened confessing.

According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection. Numbers 14:34

Are you confessing or complaining?

And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened. Matthew 24:22

In the summer, daylight lasts longer and nighttime is shorter. In winter, the days are shorter and the nights longer.

The WITH of Wilderness

God is with you even when you don’t feel Him.

For the LORD your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the LORD your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing.”’ Deuteronomy 2:7

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. John 9:1

WHEN YOU CAN'T SEE JESUS, rest in this, HE SEES YOU!

Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?” Genesis 16:13

YOU WILL SEE HIM WHO SEES YOU!

The WORK of Wilderness If you don’t see God working, He is working behind the scenes.

The daily needs of Israel in wilderness:

Food: 3 1/2 million. Quartermaster general in the army, it is reported that Moses would have to have 1,500 tons of food each day = 2 freight trains, each a mile long.

Cooking: 4,000 tons of wood = few more freight trains, each a mile long.

Water: A person’s water requirements would have been 20 quarts approximately per day in 108 degrees Fahrenheit. 11,000,000 gallons of water each day just to drink, wash themselves and clean dishes etc. This would be equivalent of a freight train of tank cars, 1,800 miles long just to bring water. They had no lakes, and only a few wells.

Space: The children of Israel crossed the Red Sea in just one night. If they went on a narrow part, double file, the line would be 800 miles long. And would take 35 days and nights to get through. So there had to be a space in the Red Sea 3 miles wide and they would have to walk across 5,000 abreast to get over in one night. Every time they camped at the end of the day, a campground of an area of 25 miles wide, and 30 miles long... or, a total of 750 square miles.

“Look, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; when He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; when He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. Job 23:8-10

But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” John 5:17

Jesus did 7 miracles on the Sabbath.

Jesus Heals Simon Peter’s Mother-in-Law (Mark 1:29-31)

Jesus heals a man with a withered hand (Mark 3:1-6)

Jesus heals a man born blind (John 9:1-16)

Jesus heals a crippled woman (Luke 13:10-17)

Jesus heals a man with Dropsy (Luke 14:1-6)

Jesus drives out an evil spirit (Mark 1:21-28)

Jesus heals a lame man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-18)

God is always working, even on your days off!

All things work together because God is behind the scenes working. (Reference Romans 8:28).

The WORD in Wilderness

To live by faith you must be ruled by the word.

But He answered and said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” Matthew 4:4

So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. Deuteronomy 3:8

Divorce from living by senses, devote your life to living by faith.

Like woman at the well, we are married to five husbands; our five senses. The six men speak of our fallen humanity, for six is the number of man who was created on the sixth day.

To live by faith, we have to ruled by God’s word

To live by feelings, we have to be ruled by the world.

There was no sword in the hands of people. 1 Samuel 13:22

When you feed yourself you will starve the bird. Matthew 13:4; 18

Devil doesn’t get stronger with time, he doesn’t have to.

Devil doesn’t win by making you wicked, he wins by making you weak.

The WORSHIP in Wilderness

Worship is the water in the wilderness. It might not be found in the river of life’s blessing but it must flow from the rock of who God is.

Worship is water. “Give Me a drink” John 4:7. We must give it to God but it also keeps us hydrated. We become what we worship.

We are created to worship. Everyone who is called by My name, whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.” Isaiah 43:7

Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, Journal of Biological Chemistry 158, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.

Don’t drink bitter waters of idolatry.

Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. Exodus 15:23

Worship is the weapon in the spiritual warfare.

Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand, to execute vengeance on the nations, and punishments on the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute on them the written judgment—this honor have all His saints. Praise the LORD! Psalm 149:6-9

Abraham worshipped when sacrificing Isaac (Genesis 22:5).

Job worshipped when he lost everything (Job 1:20)

Joshua shouted at the walls (Joshua 6:20)

Gideon blew horns (Judges 7:18)

Out from mouth of babies God ordained praise (Psalm 8:2)

David played music and Saul would experience relief (1 Samuel 16:23)

Jehoshaphat put men to praise God (2 Chronicles 20:21)

Paul and Silas in jail (Acts 16:25)

God is preparing a table before you in the presence of your enemy (Psalm 23:5) like Esther eat from that table, drink from that table.

The wilderness region in the Sinaitic peninsula through which for forty years the Hebrews wandered is generally styled “the wilderness of the wanderings.” Its extent from north to south is about 250 miles, and at its widest point it is about 150 miles broad. Throughout this vast region of some 1,500 square miles there is not a single river. Easton’s Bible Dictionary