In the wilderness, we are granted the opportunity to grow our endurance. Simply put, endurance training enlarges our capacity to handle future challenges.
So, here’s the situation: In any trials we face, God allows these hardships for a purpose, and that purpose is to produce capacity.
God will permit a hardship today that’s going to simulate the levels of pressure He knows we’re going to face tomorrow. That’s why a trial always feels greater than our current level of preparedness or responsibility. So the bottom line is that God is using our present challenges to strengthen us for greater conquests in our future.
Another challenging part of my preparation for my God-given calling during desert training was facing criticism and being called names because of my situation. From society’s perspective, I was still seen as unemployed because I wasn’t earning any income from my Kingdom work, even though I was serving full-time in the ministry God called me to start.
Instead of empathy, I was met with words that spoke death over my future rather than life.
They laughed at me and despised me: Are you going to keep doing this for another 20 years without seeing any results? Before you know it, two years will pass, then five, and suddenly you’ll be 30, then 40, and you’ll get lazy. You will fail.
People may have spoken negative things over you, but the good news is, people don’t determine your future, God does.
I felt like Nehemiah, whom they mocked with belittling statements. “Whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall” (Neh. 4:3).
I was so ashamed of my situation and stressed. The psychological pressure was immense. On days when I felt worthless because I wasn’t formally employed, God reminded me I’m still His precious child. No one can ever take away my identity in Christ.
I was so ashamed to quote the number of years I have gone through without an ‘official job’ and the pain and shame it has caused me. I have not given up on praying. I trust that God will deliver me from this turmoil.
Often people try to intimidate you by laughing at you or making light of what you are doing. They may mock you and question your ability to perform all that God has put in your heart. Or perhaps you wrestle with your own mind as it is bombarded with thoughts such as, What will people think, Will they laugh at me? Will I fail?
In this situation it is important that we know what God has instructed us to do, remembering that He “has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty” (1 Cor. 1:27). What man considers insignificant, God uses to perform the impossible. Then He gets all the glory.
Don’t forget that God intentionally made your calling beyond your ability so that you would have to rely on Him to fulfill it.
Stay strong and focused on what God had commanded you to do. Too many people give up after a few hits from the enemy rather than remaining immovable until the victory is complete. You need to know what God says about you and His plan for you. Have the mind of the Lord.
The Lord spoke to me through the book of Nehemiah, and I began to see my own journey reflected in it. Even God’s people, who were building such a magnificent wall for the Lord, gave in to sorrow and felt like giving up. Yet the Lord helped them and lifted them above their enemies.
This made me realize that if they had given up and focused on the mockery surrounding them, they would never have completed the work according to the Lord’s will and instructions. If they had focused only on their pain and the weight of the opposition, they would never have rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem.
We need to pay careful attention to how we build our lives! The Lord builds the house. It is not the strength of our flesh. Whatever God builds remains; what we build will not. Building apart from God never works out, because no matter how noble our intent, without God it is an exercise in futility.
Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.
Psalm 127:1 NKJV
If you build your life, business, or ministry with bricks of your own making, such as strength of your personality or worldly programs or techniques…then everything gained by these methods will be burned up and lost.
The wilderness may involve actual persecution, and we need to be aware that persecution is to be expected if we follow Christ.
The wilderness is where we are refined and character is developed within us. It is in the furnace of affliction and persecution that the truly godly person is made. He was developing within me the character I needed to handle the call of the coming phase of ministry.
Unfortunately, it seems we usually encounter this resistance from the people closest to us. They do not see things through God’s eyes. Their thinking is conformed to the world, not to Christ. They resist change in their perspective of how things should be or turn out.
So in order to fulfill the will of God, we must go against the flow of culture, even if that means we have to go against a “brother or sister in the Lord” whose thinking is too influenced by the world.
In the wilderness it helps to have people who love and care for you; people who will speak God’s will into your life. You don’t need critics and those who encourage you to disobey God, such as Job’s wife and his friends did. And you don’t need false prophets who flatter you when you need godly correction. You need those who speak God’s wisdom to you.
The Holy Spirit will convict us of sin, and often He will use someone else to help us see our error and repent. But ongoing accusations that offer no hope are motivated by the enemy. Beware!
Suffering is not sacrifice-it is obedience! Peter identifies true suffering as living according to God’s will as opposed to human desires. (1 Peter 4:2).
The “sufferings of Christ” means going God’s way when our mind, emotions, or physical senses are beckoning us to go the way of ease, compromise, or pleasure. This often occurs in the conflict we face when God tells us to go one way, but our friends, family, coworkers, or others desire us to go another way.
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