Essential Readings for A Godly Living

IV. The Church in the Wilderness

While God was feeding His people with manna in the desert wilderness - He was causing them to hunger. "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna..." (Deut. 8: 2-3)

Throughout their time in the desert, God did not plan for His called out people to be satisfied. While the believer remains in the desert wilderness, God will cause the seeker to hunger and thirst after the heavenly fruit of Christ's life. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled." The filling with Christ's "Spirit of life" occurs when we have come to the end of human effort and have entered into His promised rest. This is how we are enabled to "put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." (Eph. 4: 24)

The manna was given only to sustain life, never to fill and satisfy the soul. The desert is a time of removing the heart's idols from God's temple and separating your soul from worldliness - to be used for God's exclusive use. While God will continue sustaining your soul with His grace while He is testing you to find out if you will permit the Spirit to strip away your flesh-life, it will be necessary to enter into a union with Christ's divine nature before it is possible to know the firstfruits of His heavenly life.

The Lord will lead you with the convicting work of the Holy Spirit through the desert testing period "to humble you and to test you in order to know what {is} in your hearts." Will you respond to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit or will you rebel against God?

God must work out the very delicate matter of separating His called out people from their worldly way of life. He does it by bringing them to an end of their willful pride and self-sufficiency. This process will inevitably entail much suffering within the soul.

During this stripping away process, He will also be leading His people to wells of refreshment on occasions so they do not fall away and return to the ways of the world. But these periods of refreshing joy cannot be compared to the river of life that flows without ceasing in the promised land. Only those who enter the land and begin to drink from Christ's Living Water of divine life will know what it means to "never thirst." (John 4: 14) Unfortunately, only "the few" are ever willing to enter in.

My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns {by turning to the things and self-sufficient ways of this world}, broken cisterns that cannot hold water. (Jer. 2: 13)

Come all you who are thirsty, come to the waters...Why spend money...and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare. (Isa. 55: 1-2)

As we are being stripped of our self-life in the desert wilderness, God must permit long dry spells between the wells of refreshment. He would like to speed up the process as much as possible because He needs Christians "filled" with Christ's life of righteousness. He wants to manifest His divine light in this world. However, He cannot go too fast in this delicate process of separating people from the ways of the world. The Lord does not want anyone to fall away. If He were to expose us to all the evil in our fallen nature all at once, it would be more than we could bear.

When Jesus went into the desert as our example, He fasted in the physical realm to demonstrate how we are to fast in the spiritual realm. We must stop feeding our spiritual life with the things of this world. God will not fill the temple of our body with His divine life until we are willing to accept His life as our only food and drink. Jesus said, "Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me...he who feeds on this bread will live forever." (John 6: 57-58)