Some of our wilderness seasons are not yet over.

 

I know you’d like it I to be and have been praying for it all to end but there is an inner work that is still necessary to the Lord.

 

You’re going to need to submit to the season.

 

When I look at Christ I see the immediate wilderness required before the promised power.

 

I see Joseph prepared for years to be wise enough to steward well a people and their needs.

 

I see a King in David who endured temptations and trials that later served him in becoming a true and trusted King.

 

I’ve recognized in my own life some lessons I was going to see come back around until I had been made into the image of God in a better way that could handle them honorably.

 

I would learn to be gentle in my responses and look out for other hearts.

 

I would learn that even the lie said to shield others from a needed truth was no less a sin and God would need to get that people-pleasing tendency out of me in order to be a trusted mouthpiece of His.

 

I would have to be able to say “No” to shiny invitations and influential positions dying to a need for platforms that overshadowed the washing of feet in my own heart.

 

Until some of these things shifted in me, He would not be able to release me.

 

Being kept in the wilderness is painful but necessary.

 

If you continue to error in the same manners and behaviors you honestly need to stay in that wilderness classroom. If you don’t, you’ll come out too soon and murder many never learning the necessary lessons you need.

 

You’ll chase people and the way they do things instead of chasing Jesus and His way with you.

 

You’ll grab hold of every mantle but your own and live in a type of delusion while monitoring obsessively those you want to be like.

 

The Holy Spirit will never honor that.

He knows exactly who He designed you to be and nothing else will do.

 

If we move too often without consulting Jesus, that wilderness will stay our home for a little bit longer because Christ needs to know you’re going to listen when it counts and obey when lives are at stake.

 

If we mishandle hearts to have our own “piece of the pie” again and again, yep, wilderness is waiting.

 

We can be led to the wilderness or we can go on our own. Some wilderness seasons are due to consequences of our own actions. Some are merely to make a man, or a woman, into who God designed them to be. Either type of wilderness will end up serving you and the Kingdom well if you place it in the hands of Christ.

 

Warriors are made in the wilderness.

 

It is wise to stay before the throne saying, “Create in me a clean heart O’ God and renew a right spirit within me.”

 

In that request is an honest heart who is wading, and waiting, well the wilderness season.