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The Scripture is full of examples where the people of God spent significant amounts of time living in a literal wilderness. Moses, Israel, David, John the Baptist and Paul are but a few examples. The Lord used the literal wilderness in the life of His people as a place to bring the unique formulations of His Spirit to bear upon the hearts of those who were trained in that dry and barren place. The Lord still uses the wilderness in the life of the believer; the venue is just slightly different. It is not necessarily a literal place of dry, arid land, but a spiritual place or path of solitude and testing with which all believers have an appointment. The wilderness is the path that God has designated for every believer who desires to be wholehearted in Him. Wilderness seasons do not happen just once in our lives. They happen multiple times as a part of the process that leads us to maturity in Christ. The wilderness holds multiple phases and is God’s venue to conform us into the image of His Son.

The wilderness comes in many forms. It may be a testing at the hands of the enemy, whereby God permits the enemy of our soul to pursue us relentlessly for the purpose of teaching us to cling to Him. This is how God trained David, by allowing Saul to pursue him continually (1 Sam. 23:14, Psalm 54:2-4). In this way, God draws us into a level of intimacy we’ve not known before. The wilderness may also be a season where God withdraws His presence from us temporarily; this is known as “the dark night of the soul.” It may also be a place of hiddenness or obscurity where God will shield a gifted individual from public platforms. God leads us into the wilderness to humble us and to temper our hearts, causing us to hunger for Him (Deut. 8:2-3). In the wilderness of obscurity, the Lord offers us the grace to deal with our character faults so that at a later time He may display His splendor through us without it bringing great damage upon us (Isa. 61:3).

As wholehearted believers, we need to view the wilderness as a light and momentary affliction, a part of the journey, which propels us into maturity. Perceiving the wilderness as working for us rather than against us will prevent our hearts from being bogged down or becoming burnt out. If we embrace the “God-authored” wilderness seasons in our lives, it will culminate with the formation of Christ in our hearts.

The entirety of life in this age can actually be considered a wilderness. We experience unique tensions in this life because we live life through the veil of the flesh. These tensions will end only when we see Jesus face to face. In this life, we touch the realm of the spirit in a limited way because we live behind the veil of the flesh. Therefore, we are inhibited from experiencing the full reality of the heavenly realm. It is this tension of being able to experience the heavenly realm only in part that produces hunger within our hearts and resolve to know God. We are aware that we were made for another place, for another age. Our hearts yearn to know as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13:12). Yet, until that day when mortality takes on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53), we live the whole of this life in the wilderness.

There is a day coming when we will behold all that we were made for without a veil, we will be face to face with the One who will thrill our souls for a million millennia. We were made for “then.” Until “then” we live longingly, looking through the veil to catch a glimpse of His glory. Let us not forfeit that which is eternal through giving ourselves to vain pursuits that are focused on the temporal. Let us keep our eyes on that which is unfading. (2 Cor 4:18)

The Formation of the Heart
The wilderness path is essential to form the heart of the believer. There are formations that take place only in the venue of the wilderness that will not take place through any other means. It is imperative, therefore, that we embrace the wilderness journey and not attempt any detours or short cuts in His process in our lives. Too often, many do not embrace the journey of the wilderness because they find the monotony, pain, obscurity, loneliness, and hiddenness to be too much for their hearts to bear. As a result, many press the ‘eject button’ not allowing God to finalize the process. Thus, they find themselves going around the same mountain over and over again.

We need to understand that God’s method of producing maturity in His people is accomplished more often through a long process rather than through a “one time” life-changing event. In a day and age where we’ve grown accustomed to microwave ovens, fast food, and high-speed Internet, many times we lack the patience to allow God to produce in us all that He desires. Most people look to a supernatural event as a turning point in their spiritual life yet fail to realize that God mostly works in a process over time rather than in an instant. In fact, the “turning point” or supernatural event is simply one prominent moment of a long-term journey into maturity. Power encounter of this kind are in reality an invitation in grace to God’s long term plan and process for our lives. We must understand that it is His process at His pace and in His time that forms our hearts according to the good pleasure of His will.

The wilderness path is also essential to bring us into the place of abiding in Christ (John 15:7). It is designed to remove every prop from our lives and bring us to the place of complete dependence upon the Lord. God wants to remove everything that we anesthetize our hearts with because these things are inhibitors to our hearts being possessed by Him. God views these things as enemies and wants to do violence to them. He therefore leads us into the wilderness to “kick out the props” so that we will be found leaning on Him and Him alone. Self-sufficiency and dependence upon anything else but God disappears in this place and we come to find that God alone brings satisfaction (Psalm 73:25-26).

The wilderness is designed to bring us to the place of conformity to Christ and to the place of death to our own desires. Many desire the resurrected life without the crucified life; yet, that is simply not possible. Consider the cross of Christ. God delighted to crush His son. He did not deliver Christ from the cup of death. Jesus had to drink the cup to the dregs. In a like manner, God wants to qualify us through our own experiences of taking up our cross. This takes place in the wilderness.

Hebrews 13:12-13 “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to Him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace He bore.” (NIV)

Barrenness, a Gift in Grace
It is a gift from God in kindness to bring us face to face with the reality of our own barrenness. With barrenness comes the revelation that we have nothing within ourselves that sustains us. Believers must come to a revelation that within us no good thing dwells. In barrenness, meekness is forged and we are able to embrace the value of spiritual poverty, or being poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3).

The revelation of barrenness also removes the spiritual fantasy from our lives and provides a more realistic picture of what we really have in God. In other words, once all the props of life are removed and we find ourselves in the wilderness with nothing but our secret life in God to rely on, we are forced to confront the question within our own heart, “How deep is the inner well, how deep is my personal life in God?”

Friendship with God in the secret place will translate into natural loneliness. The place of solitude and quiet is also a wilderness experience. It is through this experience of loneliness yet intimacy that the heart is tempered in love and we come to find that God alone is our portion. In the secret place, friendship with God is formed and with it comes the realization that there are few who understand, few to call on. God alone becomes your portion. This is the wilderness path.
The Wilderness Path: The Release of Authority

Many times no one sees you in the wilderness. It’s a place where one fights the mental battle over personal impact and effectiveness. We find ourselves asking the question, “Is what I am doing actually making a difference?” Wrestling with accusations from the enemy over issues of validity and identity become the norm. Here in this place, no accolades from man are given. The challenge becomes not relying on our works to prove our own validity or allowing what we do to become the sole basis of our identity. Instead, there lies an amazing opportunity to find our validity and identity in God alone.

Unless one is willing to embrace the obscurity, reproach, pain and death of the wilderness path, he will not qualify for great authority. Great revelation and authority is only given to those who limp and lean, not to those who strut and swagger (Gen. 32:24-32, John 13:23, 2 Cor. 12:8, SOS 8:5-7). Consider the fact that God trains deliverers, kings, prophets and apostles in the wilderness. Moses went to Midian, David went to Adullam, Elijah went to Horeb and Paul went to Arabia. It’s the place from which “voices” emerge. The greatest prophetic voices were all tested, tempered, and tried in the wilderness. The call to the wilderness is the call to the ancient path (Jer. 6:16); they are one in the same.

The wilderness, however, is not solely made up of pain. God brings hope and comfort in the wilderness. He does this in the form of consoling the ache of our heart, giving us a vision for fullness, releasing unveiled encounter, bringing us into uninhibited intimacy, and touching us with unadulterated power. It is the vision for what is available that sustains our hearts in the wilderness. In addition, the challenges of the wilderness produce strength and fruit in the believer’s life. It is in the wilderness that fruitfulness is birthed which brings joy to the heart (Hos. 2:14-15).

Conclusion
There must be willingness in every believer to embrace the wilderness path. If we despise wilderness seasons, we are in essence saying that God’s leadership is imperfect and that His motives are impure. A whole generation of Israelites was disqualified from reaching the Promised Land because of their murmuring and complaining (Psalm 78). It is easy for us to find ourselves in the same position as the Israelites, provoking God and despising His ways because we misunderstand His leadership in our lives. The wilderness will expose and reveal the offenses and accusations in our heart towards God. We must come to trust that all His ways are perfect. The wilderness is God’s theater to bring us into total abandonment and voluntary love.

There is a tendency to misinterpret the unique and sovereign dealings of the Lord when we find ourselves in a wilderness season. As we begin to understand His ways, we recognize that the pain of the wilderness is purposeful. It is in the crucible of the wilderness that the very nature of Christ is formed in us. The wilderness qualifies us by making us worthy partners for the Man Christ Jesus. I pray that we would find ourselves grateful and abandoned to the purpose of God, rather than offended, when we encounter the wilderness. Let us not give up, but press in to the depths of the knowledge of God as He leads us according to His perfect plan.