Everyone wants the promised land, but no one wants the desert.
Yet the desert is where dependence is born.
Moses met God there.
Israel learned obedience there.
Even Jesus was led there before He began His ministry.
It’s in dry places that God strips away what we leaned until all that’s left is Him.
Deuteronomy 8:2 says, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.”
It’s easy to think that dry seasons mean something went wrong… that if God were really with us, life would feel smoother, clearer, and easier.
But the truth is, throughout the Bible, God often does His best work in places that feel barren.
Before David held a crown, he was hiding in caves.
Before Joseph ruled Egypt, he was forgotten in prison.
To reiterate again, before Jesus began HIS ministry, He faced forty days of hunger, silence, and temptation.
The pattern is clear: God doesn’t rush maturity.
The wilderness strips away our illusions of control.
It takes away the noise and shortcuts until all that’s left is you and God…
Then you finally realize He was enough all along.
Honestly, the more I ponder and think about what happens in life via suffering, the more I start to realize how arrogant and prideful I am.
It’s prideful to think I deserve anything, really.
I’ll even take my first Cardiac arrest on March 19 for example.
I pray now for a supernatural, miraculous healing for my heart so that I wouldn’t need to go through what I went through 2 weeks ago with my 2nd one.
Yet, how quickly I am able to forget that on March 19 God did a miracle for me to keep my life.
How quickly I went from “God thank you for sparing my life” to “God, please do a miracle in my life to heal my heart” as if he hadn’t already done one back then plain as day.
I’m an Israelite.
Now, it’s not wrong for me to want or ask God to heal my heart, but as I reflect on my life, although short compared to many others as I’m only 25, I can only start to realize how every good thing I have in life is a gift from God.
Including my life, including my ability to be even writing this on Wednesday, at 11:43 AM.
Let me not forget that the Lord my God has led me in the wilderness and delivered me already.
But let me use this personal anecdote or story to encourage you:
When you’re in the wilderness, everything in you wants out.
You want clarity, you beg for breakthrough, maybe you distract yourself or busy yourself to avoid the quite ache of waiting… if ONLY God would just deliver you.
When in reality, wisdom, which is the point of this newsletter, grows slowly, and there’s no express lane.
In the wilderness, your faith goes from a theory or belief in your brain into reality.
Dependence on God stops being a concept in your head and starts becoming your daily bread, and you learn to stop asking “When will this end” and start asking “What are You forming in me here?”
You can’t grow roots and bear fruit without staying in one place long enough for them to take hold.
The wilderness is where God decides it’s time to build you, and the amazing part about that is he doesn’t abandon you there.
He’s with you every step of the way, guiding you, and waiting for you to recognize that.
And when and if you do recognize that, and you do “come out” of the wilderness into a promised land, do not forget who guided you through it.
—Nils