Dying in the Wilderness

I had a dream.  It was a troubling dream.  I found myself in the middle of a desert, lost.  I wandered seemingly endlessly searching for a way out, through one scene after another of bleak lonely wilderness.  Then I awakened.  It was 1976 in my garage apartment in Waco where I was enrolled in college.  I still remember that dream and the disturbing impression left on my heart.

Some time later the Lord put a song on my heart.  The song was about a man who knew God but lost his way and returned to the world. This song continued to haunt me through my years of wandering.  Many times the Lord reached out to me and touched my heart with new songs and fresh understanding of His Word.  But the warning reminded me - continue to wander and let the world harden your heart and you'll come to an end like the miserable old soul in this song.

A few years ago my father passed away while I was away on business.  The tremendous weight of this experience caused me to become desperate for God.  I asked for Him to give me the faith I needed to become truly free from the world.  That is when I started to die.  By that I mean that I began to lose interest in the things that took me away from God.

A few months ago one of the associate pastors at my church spoke about Joshua leading the nation of Israel into the promised land.  Through him God showed me what had happened to me over those years of wandering.  More than thirty years of my life was wasted pursuing wealth and fulfillment in the world while gradually losing touch with God.  Like the children of Israel, God had taken me out of Egypt but there was still a lot of Egypt left in me that had to die in the wilderness.

Thank God I now see the green fields of the promised land.  I know now that as long as I bear this "body of sin and death" I will still need to die daily, but I also have the spirit of Christ giving life to my spirit, and the spirit of God giving life to my mortal body!

Let me also say that Jesus' parable of the sower has been fulfilled in me (see Matthew 13).  Some of the seed (the word of God) fell by the side of the road while I was a young skeptic.  Some of the seed fell on sandy soil, sprouted early but perished because it had no depth of root.  Some of the seed fell on thorny soil and was choked by my years of wandering in the cares of this world.  And some of the seed has fallen in good soil, deeply rooted in me and about to bear eternal fruit!

Does any of this ring true with you?  Are you lost in the wilderness?  There is still a way out, if you are still alive and able to call upon Jesus.  He will NEVER give up on you.