The Wilderness Way #3

If we ever needed evidence that we are in the wilderness, just consider the current financial crisis that the world is going through. Stock markets are mimicking yo-yos. Job security is questionable for many. Churches are wondering what the future portends. Usually December is the big catch up month. This year that may not be so. Nobody knows! And yet, it is here that we are most called on to be a people of faith.

Currently, our giving is ahead of last year! Furthermore, in recessions church giving usually goes up (not down as one might suppose). The Wilderness Way leads us into unknown territory. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous statement, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” has applicability. What does our faith tell us about the wilderness way on which we are traveling? What are biblical lessons that might inform us?

God leads us into the wilderness to teach us to trust the Lord’s leading and not take council to our own fears and foibles. The story of the initial reconnaissance into Canaan is instructive. Under the Lord’s director, Moses sends men to spy out the land. They return with a disquieting report. “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size.”1 (I love the old King James translation: “There are giants in the land!”)

Once again the people complain that it would have been better if they’d been left in Egypt to die. They even go so far as to suggest choosing a captain to lead them back to Egypt!2 Only Joshua and Caleb were open to act in great trust and faith. “The land that we went through as spies is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Only, do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they are no more than bread for us; their protection is removed from them and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.”3

Unfortunately, the report of Joshua and Caleb was ignored leaving them another lengthy period of wandering in the wilderness. Our wilderness way calls for us to learn again the need to radically trust and rely upon God even while we bend forward with our most arduous effort to build up the church.

Much like the people on the wilderness journey, the modern church suffers from a failure of nerve, faith and radical trust. We look at much of the secular landscape before us in the same manner as the other spies gazed at Canaan. There are giants in the land. They come wrapped in the clothes of intellectual despisers. They come shod in the garment of hedonism and make up of prosperity. Our dwindling numbers and timid faith call us to pull back. God is leading the old mainline into the wilderness once again precisely so our character may be shaped and honed like the people Israel before we once again enter the Promised Land. The wilderness is where God does a great work among us, through us and in us.

In our wilderness time we would do well to remember that after Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan (including the epic pronouncement “You are my Son,, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”4) Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil.”5 The wilderness is a place where God does a great creative work.

Egypt belonged to the Pharaoh. It was his land to rule and to control. The Promised Land was the land God gave to the Israelites. It was their territory to rule and control in faithfulness to God. The wilderness, the land in between the old slavery in Egypt and the hope of the Promised Land belonged to God. Today’s church lives in the wilderness. The wilderness is God’s land; the land where the Lord is in control and rules.

1. Numbers 13:32 4. Luke 3:22

2. Numbers 14:4 5. Luke 4:1-2a

3. Numbers 14:7-9

By: Bishop Mike Lowry On 11/28/2008

Topics: Bishop Columns