A Guide to Wilderness Survival

March 21, 2010

How many of you are familiar with the show Survivorman? Not Survivor, but SurvivorMAN.
The show where ONE guy ~ no camera crew, no medical staff, just one guy and his video
cameras ~ gets dumped off in the middle of nowhere and he has to survive for a week on his
own with nothing but a broken bicycle or whatever. It blows my mind what that guy can do
with miscellaneous parts of a broken bicycle!! Or dirty socks. That guy is the ultimate
survivor!! The contestants on the reality/game show Survivor have NOTHING on him!

Today I want to look at surviving the wilderness experiences we go through as Christians.

Because it happens, doesn’t it? More than we usually tend to appreciate, right? I want to try
and show you some things that God’s been trying to teach me over the last several months,
through several ups and downs.

Now I know that my little struggles are a walk in the park compared with some of the hardships
you’ve had to face. I’m not equating them. And while I believe God has been trying to teach
me something about the value of the wilderness, I have not yet perfected the ability to USE
what limited knowledge I’ve gained! But I believe it’s good to share with our fellow believers
the ways in which God is working in our lives to encourage each other, maybe prick some
consciences a little, but also to keep each other accountable. So that you can remind me of
what I said here this morning the next time you hear me whining and complaining about how
hard my life is!! You might be uncomfortable doing it – and rest assured, I will chafe under the
admonishment! – but I not only want to say I love the truth, I want to remember to LIVE it as
well.

What I want to draw your attention to today is the common elements of wilderness
experiences. Regardless of the duration or the severity of the struggle, there ARE some
underlying principles and lessons that I believe are the same for all wilderness experiences and
that’s where I want to focus today.

We just read about Jesus’ wilderness experience and there are many characteristics about the
deserts and observations we can make: it can happen to anyone, it doesn’t mean God doesn’t
love us, it will make us vulnerable to temptation, there may be danger – whether physical,
emotional or spiritual or any combination of the three – but the one characteristic I want to
draw your attention to is that it seems to happen most often very shortly after a time of
unusual blessing or victory in our lives, a mountaintop experience. I don’t know about you, but
I have this tendency to feel like I should be able to stay on that mountaintop. Once I’m there,
to maintain that spiritual high. But it just doesn’t work that way.

Now Jesus isn’t the only One who experienced this time of great blessing followed by a
wilderness experience.

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 Turn with me to Exodus 15 and let’s have a look at a great example of this pattern of alternating highs
and lows. It’s really quite remarkable. The context, of course, is the children of Israel had just been
delivered out of 400 years of bondage in Egypt. God had finally gotten Pharaoh to the place where he
said, “Get out of here,” and so the people left.

Then they came to the Red Sea. Mountain ranges on the left, mountain ranges on the right, the
Red Sea in front of them, and the Egyptian army breathing down their necks behind them—it
looked hopeless. The people were desperate. They cried out to God. And God sent the children
of Israel through the Red Sea on dry land.

This was one awesome experience! In verse 20 they’re praising the Lord with dancing, singing,
and musical instruments. Now look at verse 22. “Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and
they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding
water.”

Now they had just come from lots of water, and God had shown that He can deal with water!
But now they come into the wilderness. They need water to survive, and they don’t find it; they
start to panic. And all it took was three days. They leave the Red Sea, this place of great victory.
And what’s the very next place God takes them? To the wilderness, to a desert.

But then look at verse 27: “Then they came to Elim where there were twelve springs and
seventy palm trees. And they camped there by the water.” God led them to an oasis. God
supplied. God met their need.

But how long does the oasis last? Look at the very next verse. Chapter 16:1: “The whole
Israelite community set out from Elim and came to”—where? – ”to the desert of Sin.” Now
that’s not “sin” as in disobedience. That’s just the name of a desert. “…which is between Elim
and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt.”

So they hadn’t been out of Egypt for two months before they’re in their second desert
experience. And what did it follow? It followed the time of relief and refreshment,
replenishment and rejuvenation at the oasis.

Next we come to chapter 17, the remarkable story of their time at Rephidim, where they got
water from the rock, and where they defeated the Amalekites. Where Joshua led the army
while Moses held up his arms, and Aaron and Hur stood and helped him hold up his arms. They
saw the power of God. Great victory. Great blessing. Water from the rock. Enemy destroyed.
That’s chapter 17.

Now chapter 18 is a parenthesis, and then we come to chapter 19. Exodus 19:1, the very next
thing after Rephidim. “On the third month after the Israelites had left Egypt – on the very
day”—where did they come?—“they came into the Desert of Sinai.”

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 Third month, third desert. And what did the desert follow? It followed a place of unusual
blessing and victory. Are you seeing the pattern here?! Jesus’ experience happened true to this
pattern. So did Elijah’s – after the amazing spectacle of God’s power and sovereignty at Mount
Carmel, he ran away and hid, afraid for his life, wishing he could die. The apostle Paul’s time in
the wilderness followed his incredible meeting with God on the Damascus road. David’s time in
the wilderness followed Goliath’s death and the resulting victory over the Philistines.

The desert often follows a time of blessing and victory. Expect that after times of great blessing
and fruitfulness and victory and abundance, we may find ourselves in a desert.

It’s not an accident. God has not abandoned us. He has not forgotten us, but the desert is not
avoidable; it’s necessary if we want to grow.

And I believe there are two primary reasons we end up in a desert. Sometimes we end up
there because God is disciplining us, but sometimes it's simply God's design; His plan for our
lives. This is God's plan to make us more like Jesus

Turn back with me, if you would, to Exodus 13:17. “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did
not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter.” That was
the closest, most direct route to get to the Promised Land, but God didn't lead them the
closest, most direct route. “For God said, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and
return to Egypt.’" The people weren't ready to fight against the Philistines yet. They weren't
ready to handle war. God needed to prepare them for what they were going to face, so what
happened?

Verse 18, “So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.” God was
still leading, but God didn't take them the most direct route. God led them the long way
around. Not because they had sinned, but because they weren’t ready yet for battle.

Now, the next 38 years they wandered in the desert because they had sinned, but the first time
they ended up in the wilderness, it was not because they had sinned. It was just the design of
God for their lives.

It was God's plan, God's perfect plan, and sometimes we, too, will end up in the wilderness
because God said, “There's something I need to teach you here. There's something I need to do
in you to prepare you for what lies ahead.” God produces growth and fruit in our lives that
simply wouldn’t happen any other way. God may have purposes for our lives that can only be
fulfilled in the desert.

So what ARE some of those purposes? Sometimes, it’s to test us. Look again at Exodus 15. In
verse 25, the children of Israel are in the desert of Shur, and The Scripture says, “There the
LORD made a decree and a law for them and there he tested them.”

Chapter 16:4, after they left the oasis of Elim: “Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down
bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that
day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.”

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 Chapter 20:20 – this is the desert of Sinai, where God gave His people the Law. And Moses said
to them, "Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you
to keep you from sinning."

God sometimes says, “I want to test you. I’m trying to teach you something, and I want to see if
you’ve learned it.” You know, who and what we really are comes out when we’re being tested.
We find out what we really love; what really matters to us. We find out who and what we’re
really trusting.

God tests us to find if we will trust and obey. When we cannot see Him, when our emotions
scream, “He’s not here, He’s forgotten about you!!” When our circumstances are painful. When
it looks like our needs aren’t being met? Will we trust and obey God when we’re in impossible
situations, where we have no human resources to meet our needs?

Sometimes God sends us into the desert to humble us. Moses says in Deuteronomy “God led
you all the way into the desert these 40 years to humble you. He humbled you, causing you to
hunger” (Deut. 8:3, paraphrased). In the desert, where we don’t have anything to lean on, God
strips us – of our pride, our self-sufficiency. Our pride wants to keep us in a circumstance
where we can manage everything, but God sends us into the desert, where we can’t manage.
We can’t make it on our own. What we really are comes out, and we come to the realization
that, “apart from you, God, I’m a MESS! I can’t keep my life together. I can’t do this on my
own.” We’re humbled.

We’ve already said, God send us into the desert to teach us. “He humbled you,” Deuteronomy
8:3 says, “causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna . . . to teach you that man
does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
God had something He wanted to teach His people, and it took the desert for them to learn it.

We’re so driven by our physical needs. I mean, if we’re hungry, that is the ultimate need in ou
lives at that point, right? We’re so driven by what we can see and touch and taste—our natural
physical senses—but God sends us into the desert, where sometimes those needs may not be
met. But we find that God still can meet our needs, even when He isn’t answering or
responding in the way that we thought He should have or the way that we asked.

And then He sends us into the desert to strengthen our faith and to make us dependent on
Him. He wants to teach us total reliance upon Him. The children of Israel, when they were in
Egypt, were totally reliant on Pharaoh. Now, it wasn’t much of a life, because Pharaoh didn’t
have a heart for these Israelites, but when they ended up in the desert, we find them wistfully
wishing for the “good ol’ days” back in Egypt. And we think, “wow, do they REMEMBER
Egypt??!!” But you see, they’d been dependent on Pharaoh, and they’d had food to eat;
Pharaoh had been their provider. But God wanted them to come to the place where they no
longer relied on any man to provide, but were totally dependent on Him. God wants us there,
too. I came across a great quote this week that fits in here perfectly:

We’ll never know that Christ is all we need, until He’s all we have
And when He is all that we have, we find that Christ is really all we need.

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 God wants to make us fully dependent on Him. He wants us to remember that we need Him,
that we cannot live without Him. So He sends us into the desert where there’s no water. It’s hot
and barren and dry and dangerous and isolated and all these things, so that we can be in a
place where we have to cry out to Him.

When we can’t hear, we can’t see, we don’t know— we learn to walk by faith.

Another reason God sends us into the desert is to build endurance and prepare us for future
service. The children of Israel weren’t ready for war when they came out of Egypt, but God was
leading them to a land where they were going to have to fight a LOT of people in order to
possess it! So God sent them into the desert to prepare them, to build endurance, to condition
them to face the giants that they would face in the land.

And God sends us to do battle for Him as well. He’s called each of us to a ministry. Maybe our
children are our mission field, maybe our co-workers. There are ways that God wants to use us
down the road, things that we don’t even know that God has in store for us, ways that He
wants us to serve Him in future seasons of life. And God uses the desert to prepare us for that.
In Luke’s account of the temptation of Christ, it says that after His wilderness experience ended,
“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.”

Do we want to function in our strength, in our own power, just living natural, explainable lives?
Or do we want a life of ministry that is marked by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit?
That training course is probably going to be held in the wilderness.

One of the reasons God might send us to the desert is to get us to Jesus. While I was
preparing for this morning, I stumbled across this observation and it blew me away. We’ve
looked very briefly over a bunch of chapters in Exodus, but think about what God provided:
manna, bread from heaven, right on time, every day, just enough. He provided water where
there was no water. Water out of a rock! He led the Israelites by a pillar of cloud and fire.

You know what these are? These are pictures of Christ!! Christ who is the bread of life; He is
manna from heaven. Christ who is the living water. Christ who is our Rock. Christ who appears
to us in our darkness in the cloud of His glory and His presence. All of these aspects of God’s
provision for Israel in the desert are pictures of Christ!! Isn’t that beautiful?

God uses the desert to show us His grace and His glory. Exodus 16:10 says “While Aaron was
speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the
glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.” The children of Israel saw the glory of God in the
dark nights of the desert in a way they didn’t see God’s glory when they had everything going
well.

Isaiah chapter 40, a real familiar passage: “A voice cries: ‘In the wilderness prepare the way of
the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’” (Isaiah 40:3). God comes to
meet with us in our deserts. And that passage goes on to say, “And the glory of the Lord will be
revealed, and all mankind will see it.” (Isaiah 40:5).

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 Not only will God reveal His glory to us in our desert, but others will see it, too. I want my life to
be the kind of life that causes others to look and say, “What an incredible God!” But if they
don’t see me stretched and receiving God’s grace, if my life just looks easy and there are no
problems and there are no challenges and there are no struggles, what’s going to make them
think that God is great?

When people see us walking through hardship or testing or trials or affliction or adversity or
dry times and still saying, “Yet I will praise Him;” they see God manifesting Himself to us,
ministering to us, comforting us in those times; they see the glory and the grace of God
reflected in us. I don’t know about you, but I WANT THAT!

You want to really know Jesus? You want to experience His protection, His provision, His
presence, His peace, His power? Then God will lead you to the wilderness.

Isaiah 35:1-2 says, “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice
and blossom… and they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.” And that’s
what it’s all about. It’s not about me. It’s not about my convenience, my comfort, my
happiness, my ease. It’s about pointing people to Him.

It’s always been tough for me to understand how James could tell us to, “Consider it pure joy,
my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” – because we don’t WANT hardships in
our lives! None of us do! But James reiterates what we’ve seen here today – “because you
know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

When Survivorman parachutes into the deserts of Utah with no one and nothing but a broken
bike, he still somehow has everything he needs to survive. With God, we too, have what we
need not only to survive the wilderness; but to thrive and to ultimately display His glory.

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