THE VOICE OF THE WILDERNESS

Matthew 4:1 
Then Yeshua was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness …

"Adonai spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai" (Numbers 1:1). 

Maybe you are going through a dry spiritual season; a time of wilderness. Neither fear nor despair, for it is the creator of your soul who brought you there.

Wildernesses hold special places in our lives. They become reference points in our lives forever. They often are places of refuge (Revelations 12:6), provision (Deuteronomy 8:16), revelation (Revelation 17:3), and maturation (Deuteronomy 8:2–3). 

Our fathers’ crossing the desert was really their honey-moon with Hashem. Relatively speaking they had very little cares or worries. Supplied with a constant provision of the most healthy food you can get on this earth and a fountain of water that followed them, they were under Hashem’s never failing trust fund. . On top of it, through the person of Moses, they had direct access to Hashem. It is no wonder they did not want to enter the Land. They were going to have to start planting and sowing fields, reaping harvests, organize a government as well as an effective army.

Adonai remembers these years in the desert with the nostalgia of a husband remembering his early espousals. Through the prophet Hoseah he speaks of alluring his Bride to a desert place where she could give him her full attention (Hoseah 2:14), then he says, "I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown (Jeremiah 2:2). Each year at the Feast of Tabernacles we are to remember these simple beginnings of our walk Hashem (Leviticus 23:41–43).

Just like our fathers spent forty years in the desert learning to lean and depend on God in obedience and trust for even their daily food, Yeshua spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness learning the same lessons (Matthew 4:1–12). If both our Fathers and the Master had to go though these things, why should we feel slighted when Hashem decides to have us to endure what seems to be a dry time? 

Cherish your wilderness times. They are times for you to focus your attention on the only things that really matter which are Hashem, his will in your life, and his Words. May we, like our Fathers and our Master also learn, grow, and mature from our wilderness times.

 P. Gabriel Lumbroso
www.thelumbrosos.com

For P. Gabriel Lumbroso's devotional UNDER THE FIG TREE in Kindle edition click here.