The Power of the Wilderness

What God does in us in the desert

O God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)

David is in the wilderness when he writes these words. Some think it was when he was running from Saul. Others, when he was running from Absalom. We do not know for certain, but we know he is in trouble and he is in the desert.

In some countries, wilderness means trees, mountains and rivers – beautiful and remote. This is a different kind of wilderness. David is in the Judean wilderness – a harsh, barren place. The sun is beating down. There is no water in this dry and weary land. And there in the desert, with his body crying for water, he cries for God.

David takes the extremity of the human body in the desert – the heat, the dryness, the cracked lips, the failing flesh – and uses it to picture the extremity of the human soul in a time of suffering. Pain, barrenness, despair, the sense that we have come to the end. And in this place, David says, our soul cries. Not for physical water but for the living water – for God Himself. The same intensity of cry, but for Him.

This is the power of the wilderness. The desert has a unique work to do in our lives, and the more we understand from Scripture what God does in the desert, the more we will be encouraged in our own seasons of suffering, and the more we will turn deeply to God when we are in a desert.

There are at least five powers of the wilderness.

The Wilderness Purifies the Heart

There is an old story of a man lost in the desert. For days he had no water. The sun beat down, the dry wind sucked the moisture from his body, and every fiber in him cried for water. Stumbling through the rock and sand, he kicked a bag in the dirt. He opened it and out poured diamonds. He looked at them and spat, “Diamonds? I don’t want diamonds. I need water!”

This is the power of purification. In the desert, God strips away every other thing that drives us. He breaks the power of our ambition, our self-confidence, our drivenness, our self-centered visions. When you are in the desert and you have no water, nothing else matters – your bank account, recognition, titles, achievements, followers. The only thing that matters is water.

And so it is in the wilderness of the soul. God brings us to a place where nothing else matters but Him. He purifies our cry, our desire, the deep longing of our hearts. We are people who get caught up in cravings for so many things – our culture trains us in this from childhood – and we cry to God for possessions and pleasant circumstances and successful outcomes. But in the desert, God purifies the cry itself. He brings us back to the simplicity of a heart that wants Him, and only Him. “My soul thirsts for You!”

The Wilderness Reveals What Is Within Us

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Peter writes to believers in the middle of suffering, and he gives them a dramatic image: faith tested in the fire, like gold refined by heat. In the fire, the dross rises to the surface and is scooped off, and the pure gold remains. The fire reveals what is truly there.

This is what the wilderness does in us. We are good at hiding what is inside our hearts when life is comfortable. We know what to say, how to look, how to keep up appearances. We can fool ourselves for years that all is well. But when the fire comes, what is in us comes to the surface, and we cannot hide it any longer.

Sometimes what comes to the surface is gold. The strong faith we did not know we had. The trust in God we suspected was theory but turns out to be real. The compassion for others, the strength under pressure, the patience to endure. We discover by the fire that the Lord Jesus is truly living in us, and that there is more of Him in our hearts than we realized.

But the fire also brings out the rubbish – the selfishness, the bitterness, the impatience with God and with people, the unresolved conflicts that we had buried under busy lives. We are squeezed by the pressure of the desert, and what comes out is sometimes ugly. We see ourselves as we are, not as we have pretended to be.

God does not bring us into the fire to discourage us. He does not point at the dross and say, “See, I told you.” His purpose is the opposite. He removes the dross so that the gold may shine. He reveals what is genuine so that, in the end, our faith may result in praise, glory and honor at the revelation of the Lord Jesus.

The Wilderness Brings Us to Depend on God

For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1:8-10)

This is Paul, the great apostle! The brilliant teacher of justification by faith. The man who already knew, more clearly than any of us, that we cannot trust in ourselves but only in God. And yet here, in some terrible affliction in Asia, Paul is brought to the place of being so utterly burdened beyond his strength that he despairs of life itself. He feels the sentence of death. He is sure he is going to die.

Why did God allow this? Paul tells us. “But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.” Even Paul – who taught dependence on God – needed to be brought to a deeper experience of it. The wilderness was not random. This was not the devil having his way while God slept; it was the wise hand of God bringing His servant to a deeper place of trust.

Dependence on God is not simply a doctrine to be agreed with. It is a way of living – and it is hard for us. We are not naturally good at being weak. We like to be strong and in control and to have the answers. The truth is that we are weak, but embracing our weakness does not come easily. So God brings us into the desert to teach us that we cannot do this on our own.

But, in the end, the deliverance comes. God delivered Paul. He has delivered you in the past and He will deliver you now.

He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again. (2 Corinthians 1:10)

Every desert in your life is the wise hand of God bringing you to a deeper place of dependence on Him. Do not waste it. Let yourself be weak. Let yourself need Him. The wilderness is the school where this is taught, and there is no other.

The Wilderness Drives Us to Pursue God

Hear David’s cry again, from inside the desert:

O God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Psalm 63:1)

David could have responded to the desert in many ways. He could have cried in self-pity. “Why is this happening to me? Why are people treating me like this? It is not fair.” He could have given in to anger at his enemies, blame toward those around him, demands that God fix everyone else and rescue him from the heat. He does some of that elsewhere in the Psalms. But here, his heart goes straight to God.

“O God, You are my God.” This is purification of vision. Nothing else matters now but God. “Earnestly I seek You.” This is pursuit, not casual interest or occasional prayer, but the seeking of a man whose body cries for water. “My soul thirsts for You. My flesh faints for You.” This is deep dependence. He needs God the way the body in the desert desperately needs water.

This is the right response to the wilderness. Pursue God! Seek Him as you have never sought Him before. Let the cry of your heart become a cry for God Himself, for the living water – for His Presence, His face. Do not waste the desert pursuing any of the smaller things that you might have pursued in better times. Pursue Him. The wilderness was given to you for this, and it will work in you what nothing else can.

The Wilderness Demands a Response

There is one final power of the wilderness, and it is even more difficult than the others. The desert is an opportunity, but it is not a guarantee. The transformation is not automatic. The same wilderness that brings one believer into a deeper place in God will, if the response is wrong, harm another. Not everyone who walks through the desert finds God there.

In fact, many are destroyed by the desert. They are overcome by their own anger – anger at the circumstances, anger at the people around them, anger at God Himself. They are overcome by their own sense of injustice. They have been wronged, but they let the wrong define them. They cling to their rights and refuse to give up control. And what could have been an opportunity for life becomes the other edge of the sword and harms them.

You can probably think of believers you have watched walk through suffering and not do well. They tried to get their own way with God, held on to bitterness, and demanded explanations they would not move forward without. And in the end, the wilderness took from them rather than giving to them.

Whether the desert is for your good or for your harm is determined, in the end, by how you respond. Will you let it purify you? Will you let it reveal what is in you – both the gold and the dross? Will you let it bring you to a deeper dependence on God? Will you let it drive you into a deeper pursuit of Him? Or will you fight it, resent it, blame everyone around you for it, and refuse to be changed by it?

The choice is yours. The desert provides you with a great opportunity, but it is not forced upon you. You must choose to take it.

Paul brings all of this together in 2 Corinthians 4:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)

“This treasure in jars of clay.” The treasure is the Presence, power and beauty of God Himself, His wisdom, His glory, His Son living in us. The jars of clay are us. The jars are not so impressive on the outside. But this is exactly the way God designed it, that the surpassing power may be seen to belong to Him and not to us. We carry the death of Jesus in our bodies – the daily breaking of the jar of clay through various kinds of suffering – so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in us. The cracking of the jar lets the treasure shine forth.

Also, Paul does not say the death of Jesus is at work in us only for our own benefit. He says, “So death is at work in us, but life in you.” The wilderness purifies you not only for your sake but for the sake of others. As you find Him more deeply, you have more of Him to give to others. Look at the people around you – they need Jesus. And through the power of your wilderness, you are being prepared to give His life to them.

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

In the desert, suffering does not feel light or momentary. It feels heavy and endless. But Paul, who knew suffering as deeply as anyone, calls it light and momentary because when it is compared to an eternal weight of glory it is nothing. The desert is working for you. It is achieving for you what nothing else could achieve. And one day, on the other side, you will see this.

So fix your eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. Fix your eyes on Him, on eternity, on the great purpose of God being worked out in your life through the wilderness. The desert is working for you.

Let’s pray together.

O God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Father, here we are in the desert. We didn’t ask to come here. We didn’t see it coming. And we don’t know how long it will last. But we know that You are here, and that nothing about this is random or out of Your hand.

Lord, purify our hearts. Strip away every other thing that drives us. Break our drivenness, our ambition, our self-confidence, our self-centered visions. Bring us back to the simplicity of a heart that wants only You. Make our cry a cry for You alone.

Lord, reveal what is in us. Bring the dross to the surface and skim it off. Show us the bitterness, the anger, the impatience, the unresolved things we have buried. We don’t want to hide them anymore. And let the gold that You have placed in us – the faith, the love, the Presence of Your Son – shine in this fire to Your glory.

Lord, we are weak. We don’t always like to admit it, but we are. We have tried to be strong, tried to manage our lives, tried to figure it all out on our own, and the desert has shown us what we really are. We are weak. We need You. Teach us to depend on You – the God who raises the dead.

Lord Jesus, we seek You. Earnestly we seek You. We will not let this desert pass without finding You more deeply than we have ever found You before. We pursue You. We thirst for You. Our souls cling to You, and Your right hand upholds us.

Father, where we have been responding wrongly, where we have been bitter, angry, blaming, refusing to give up control, forgive us. Soften us. We submit ourselves to You. We give You our complaints, our pride, our demand to understand. Have Your way in this desert, in this fire, in this wilderness, in this long dry season. We trust You.

And Father, what You are working in us, work it through us for the blessing of others. Let the death of the jar of clay reveal the life of Your Son. Let what You are doing in our suffering become a stream of life for those around us who are perishing.

We fix our eyes on what is unseen. The desert is light and momentary. The eternal weight of glory is far greater. You are taking us through. You will deliver us. On You we have set our hope that You will deliver us again.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.