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Growing through the Desert Seasons
Growing through the Desert Seasons
Essentials for Growth
Part 1
We’re kicking off a new series on spiritual growth this month. To start all of that off, I want to talk today about growing spiritually through the desert seasons of life.
To get us started I want to ask you a question. Can anybody tell me what the largest desert in the world is? Somebody guess. Sahara? Mojave? Gobi? Any other guesses?
The Antarctic is the largest desert in the world. You say how is that possible? That’s a real odd place.
It’s because a desert is not measured by heat. A desert is measured by how much rainfall or snowfall happens in a year? Any place that gets ten inches or less in a year is a desert. The Antarctic only gets two inches of precipitation in a year.
You say, wait a minute! I saw the Penguin movie and I watch National Geographic and the Discovery channel. I’ve seen those enormous blizzards and all of that. How is that possible?
It’s because what you’re actually seeing is snow and ice that’s already been there for a long, long time. It’s too cold to melt. And it’s just blowing all over that enormous continent. But the Antarctic actually only receives two inches of fresh snowfall in a year.
Another way you can measure a desert is it’s a place that has more evaporation than rainfall or snow. You didn’t know you were coming to science class today did you?
The reason I‘m going into all of this stuff is because there’s a life metaphor here. The desert that I want to talk about today is the desert seasons of the soul.
Because a desert can be a very, very hot, dry place. But a desert can also be a very cold place. And of course the desert can be the time when you’re just giving out a whole lot more than you’re taking in. Anybody ever been through those kinds of deserts before?
I want to talk tonight about how we can grow in the desert seasons of our life. How do we meet the Lord when we find ourselves in a desert?
The Bible tells us that God spoke to a lot of people in their deserts. He spoke to Abraham in the desert. He spoke to Jacob in the desert. He spoke to Moses in the desert.
You go, of course, they lived in the desert. And that’s true; they lived in the desert. But he spoke to them in the desert of their deserts. In the wilderness of their deserts.
God spoke to Elijah in the desert. He led Jesus out into the desert. And many times God spoke to David, King David, in the desert. We can read about these interactions that David had in his desert experience with God as we read through the Psalms.
I want us to look at one of those Psalms right now. . David wrote this Psalm when he was in the desert of Judah being chased by Saul. Saul was trying to kill him. So talk about being in the heat of things! There he was – he was in the heat of things. Here’s what David said:
“OH, GOD YOU ARE MY GOD, EARNESTLY I SEEK YOU; MY SOUL THIRSTS FOR YOU, MY BODY LONGS FOR YOU, IN A DRY AND WEARY LAND WHERE THERE IS NO WATER. I HAVE SEEN YOU IN THE SANCTUARY AND BEHELD YOUR POWER AND YOUR GLORY. BECAUSE YOUR LOVE IS BETTER THAN LIFE, [not because of your power and glory but because your love is better than life] MY LIPS WILL GLORIFY YOU. I WILL PRAISE YOU AS LONG AS I LIVE, AND IN YOUR NAME I WILL LIFT UP MY HANDS. MY SOUL WILL BE SATISFIED AS WITH THE RICHEST OF FOODS; WITH SINGING LIPS MY MOUTH WILL PRAISE YOU. ON MY BED I REMEMBER YOU; I THINK OF YOU THROUGH THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. [he’s up pacing the floor in the middle of the night – just like we do. I think of you through the watches of the night] BECAUSE YOU ARE MY HELP, I SING [everybody say “sing.”] IN THE SHADOW OF YOUR WINGS. MY SOUL CLINGS TO YOU; YOUR RIGHT HAND UPHOLDS ME.”
He says earnestly I seek you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Does that sound familiar to anybody? Ever found yourself in one of those places where you feel spiritually dry?
Where life just seems barren and fruitless? And you’re just dying for a taste of the water that God would have to offer you.
I believe that some of us are probably in desert seasons right now. You might be in one of those deserts where the heat is turned up. And everything is parched in your life. Maybe the heat is turned up at work. Maybe you’re in a financial crisis. Maybe you’re in a family crisis. The heat is turned up.
Maybe you’re being treated unfairly in a relationship. Maybe you’re seeing all of the fruit on the vine withering away. Everything that you worked so hard for is just withering and dying in the heat of what you are experiencing right now.
You look for comfort. You want to hear what God might have to say to you so you go to the Word and you try to read your Bible. But it’s just sort of like chewing on sawdust.
There’s just nothing there. There’s no life. There’s no fruitfulness happening in your life. No rain has fallen in a long time.
So you find yourself living on memories of past encounters with God, wishing that life could be like it used to be. Like it was when everything was wonderful. In times like these oftentimes your prayer can be, “God! Just get me out of this! When is this ever going to end?”
Or perhaps you might be in a desert season in your soul when your heart has turned cold and it’s become hardened. Maybe you’re just burned out. You could be angry with God over something that God did or maybe something that God did not do.
And your heart is turning cold. You’re burning out. You’re losing your passion for life. You’re losing your passion for God. Your prayers are just hitting the ceiling.
And it seems like he has left you, he’s not paying any attention to you. And in times like that your prayer can be, either “God, where are you?” Or it might just be “God, I don’t even care any more.”
Maybe there are some of you who are in one of those desert seasons where you’re just giving out way more than you’re taking in. There are too many commitments, too many expectations.
You’ve got too many plants in the ground and only so much water. There’s so much demanded of you and only so much of you to meet those demands and you’re getting to the point where you’re saying, “I’m empty. I’ve got nothing left here.
Everything of life has evaporated away. And even when it does seem like some kind of refreshment has come it’s sucked out of my life before I can even enjoy anything of it.”
The joy of your life goes away in times like that. Your prayer might be “God, I don’t have anything to give any more.”
If you’re in one of those kinds of deserts I have news for you today. That’s what I want us to unpack and see what the Scripture says about those experiences of life. Because if you’ve never been through one of those deserts, trust me! You will be.
Most of our life is either spent in one of those deserts; on our way out of one of those, or on our way back in. That’s just the way life is. We have to know how do we meet the Lord there. How can we grow in the desert season when it seems like nothing is going to grow anywhere in our life?
I have been through many of these deserts. I’ve found that there are generally three questions that I ask when I go through this.
The first question I ask is, “How in the world did I get here? How did this happen? Why is this going on?”
The second question I ask is, “What am I supposed to do in this desert?”
The third question is, “How am I ever going to get out of here? When is this going to end?”
I actually want to answer that question first. The answer to the question, when am I going to get out of here? It may be a little hard to hear. But the answer is: you will get out in due time.
Here’s why I say that. You don’t want to be in a hurry in a desert. When God wants to teach you a lesson, when God wants to say something to you and he’s brought you into a desert season, you don’t want to be in a hurry.
Because if you rush your way through, you might miss something. I’ve learned to pray in desert seasons, “God, you just take as long as you need to take because I don’t want to do this again. I want to get the lesson the first time.”
There’s beauty in the desert that you may not see in other places. But you have to take the time to look at it, and to take in the beauty of what is happening in that situation.
There is life in the desert but sometimes you just have to look for it. Sometimes it’s hard to see. So you don’t want to be in a hurry.
You don’t want to lag behind either. You don’t want it to take any longer than it needs to but you don’t need to be in a hurry in this.
But what I have found in the desert is that God actually seemed closer than he had seemed in a long time. It’s like I knew he was with me in the desert.
Many deserts are hard one to go through. Sometimes they lasted several months. But as you are coming to the end of that season you can actually see the things were about to change.
It’s like I could look out on the horizon and I can see rain coming. You can start seeing something changing.
So don’t be in a hurry to get through it. Take the time you need. Let God do what he wants to do in that season of your life. While you’re waiting for the season to end don’t stop doing the right thing. It’s very easy for us to just give in and say, “I’m just tired of this. This isn’t working.
God is ignoring me. Why am I even bothering to try to talk to him? Why am I even bothering to come to the Word or to come to church?” Don’t give up on doing the right thing.
Look at this verse from “LET US NOT BECOME WEARY IN DOING GOOD, FOR AT THE PROPER TIME WE WILL REAP A HARVEST IF WE DO NOT GIVE UP.”
At the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. There is a promise there. And you need to take God at His Word. Don’t give up. You will reap a harvest at the right time.
But the question still remains. How did I get here? Why is this happening to me now? Is God mad at me? Have I done something wrong? Has God just forgotten me all together?
I believe it’s most likely if you’re a follower of Jesus Christ that you’re in the desert because God brought you there. Just like he led Elijah into the desert. Just like he led Jesus into the desert.
He has brought you into a desert season because there’s something he wants to say to you and there’s no other place that you could hear it – unless you were in this situation right now with all the other things of life out of the way.
He’s trying to get your attention. God brought you here for a specific reason to say something to you right in the middle of your crisis.
Listen to these words from the book of Hosea, 2:14-23. What’s happened in this case, Hosea is this little book in the Old Testament and what’s happened is God’s people have been disobedient. And so he’s got to bring some correction into their life. But listen to what he says.
“THEREFORE I AM NOW GOING TO ALLURE HER I WILL LEAD HER INTO THE DESERT AND SPEAK TENDERLY TO HER.” [I would expect him to say I will lead her into the desert and jusbeat up on her for a while. No. He says I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.] “THERE I WILL GIVE HER BACK HER VINEYARDS, AND WILL MAKE THE VALLEY OF ACHOR A DOOR OF HOPE. THERE [in the desert] SHE WILL SING [everybody say “sing”] AS IN THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH, AS IN THE DAY SHE CAME UP OUT OF EGYPT. [In other words when she was first set free.]
IN THAT DAY, DECLARES THE LORD, YOU WILL CALL ME ‘MY HUSBAND’; YOU WILL NO LONGER CALL ME ‘MY MASTER’. I WILL REMOVE THE NAMES OF THE BAALS [the Baals were idols –false gods.] I WILL REMOVE THE NAMES OF THE BAALS FROM HER LIPS; NO LONGER WILL THEIR NAMES BE INVOKED. IN THAT DAY [the desert] I WILL RESPOND, DECLARES THE LORD.
[That word “respond”, the Hebrew word is the same word we read a couple verses earlier “to sing.” He says in the desert she will sing to me and in that day he says here I will sing back. I will respond, I will sing.] I WILL [SING] TO THE SKIES AND THEY WILL [SING] TO THE EARTH AND THE EARTH WILL [SING] TO THE GRAIN, THE NEW WINE AND OIL. AND THEY WILL [SING] TO MY PEOPLE.”
The Lord says I’m going to lead her into the desert and in the desert, in the dry and weary land I’m going to give her back her vineyards.
There in the Valley of Achor he says she will sing to me and I will sing back to her and cause her land to flourish.
There’s a promise of fruitfulness and restoration that will take place in the desert. Not after the desert. You see, God is not on the other side of your trouble waiting for you to figure it out and find your way through.
He says in the middle of it all, that’s where this restoration is going to take place. Your desert experience may seem like a place of barrenness. But God says he will make it a place of fruitfulness. God is about to do something in your life in this desert. He is on his way to meet you in your crisis. t