In Other Words…

des·ert (–noun) a region so arid because of little rainfall that it supports only sparse and widely spaced vegetation or no vegetation at all.

Many times when someone says they are walking through a desert, something is happening in their life that is causing them to struggle. If you are like me, I would assume the cause of the desert is something external. For example a child acting up, or a financial crisis, or a marriage in trouble, etc.. Something tangible is causing this desert. I use to think that….but last week I found you can have everything fine in your eternal life, but you are living in a internal spiritual desert. Now I am talking about Christians here, because if you don’t know Christ then you are always in a spiritual desert.

I like to avoid things. If something is unpleasant I will ignore it or stuff it down. If my feelings were hurt or something is not going my way, you would probably hear me say, “that is ok, then it is not God’s will.” I would mean that with my whole heart, I would not be lying. But one thing I have learned is that I like to “stuff” things until I blow. This happened in my marriage early on, I would blind side my poor husband with things that happened in weeks past, but finally they were surfacing because something happened to push me over the edge. I have since learned not to do that in my married life.

Unfortunately, last week God showed me that I have been doing that in my spiritual life. God pushed and pushed and pushed me on things I did not want to confront. I just wanted to say, “your will be done” and end it there. But God, being God knew I was “stuffing” my feelings. He began bring the stuff up I wanted to keep down. It was stuff I could not control, stuff I could not change, but God knew the feelings it was causing in me. Instead of voicing and confronting my feelings I would just ignore them, then they become seeds of anger, seeds of jealousy, seeds of bitterness that I was not aware of.

I don’t like to be angry, but with God pushing me, he was making me angry, truly angry to the point where I yelled out, “where is all this anger coming from Lord? Where!!” I was going through a spiritual desert. And I will be honest as I am writing this, I am still trying to figure everything out.

But God pushed me so much until I lashed out finally. I got angry at HIM, I had my hissy fit. Then suddenly I hear the still voice that says, “finally, now we can move forward.” Let me tell you I did not like that one bit. I am still raw over it, but God was showing me that we can be in a spiritual desert that can affect our walk with him and not even be aware of it. God knows I want to live His will, He also knows my heart’s desire even though I fail daily. But most of all He knows what keeps me from knowing Him deeper. “When I am found in the desert place, Blessed be your name.” Praise God he never lets me go. I could not appreciate the mountain, if I did not live in the desert.

You can get the CWO icon here. Head on over to Sting My Heart to read more wonderful takes on this weeks quote.