A Way Through the Wilderness: Growing in Faith When Life Is Hard

by Rob Renfroe

Overview

At one time or another, everyone has a wilderness experience, a time when life is barren and difficult and we feel alone and desperate, not knowing where to turn. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a financial or health crisis, divorce, or some other painful experience, we see no end in sight and wonder how we can make it through another day.

In the Scriptures we see that often God’s people went through a wilderness experience, and these experiences changed them in profound ways. The truth is that it’s impossible to go through the wilderness without being changed. There’s a way through the wilderness that can leave us broken and bitter and far away from God. But there’s another way through—God’s way—that leaves us with a deeper faith and draws us closer to God than we ever imagined.

With sensitivity and warmth, Rob Renfroe explores the wilderness experience—what it is, how we get there, why God allows it, and how we can get through it God’s way so that we learn the lessons that can be learned only in the desolate seasons of life when we are totally dependent on God.

A DVD featuring six interviews with the author and a full leader guide are also available for group study.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501800962
Publisher:	Abingdon Press
Publication date:	07/31/2015
Series:	A Way Through the Wilderness
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Rob Renfroe is Pastor of Discipleship at The Woodlands UMC in Houston, Texas, leader of the popular men's Bible study Quest, attended by over 500 men, and the author of The Trouble with the Truth and A Way Through the Wilderness. He also is President of Good News—a national organization committed to the doctrinal integrity and spiritual renewal of The United Methodist Church. He and his wife, Peggy, are the parents of two adult sons.

Read an Excerpt

A Way Through the Wilderness

Growing in Faith When Life is Hard

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By Rob Renfroe

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2015 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-0096-2

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CHAPTER 1

No Way Around the Wilderness

If the wilderness is to have any benefit in our lives, we need to understand what it is, who ends up there, and why God allows us to go through such difficult experiences. The answers to these questions may change not only your understanding of the wilderness but also how you see God.

What Is the Wilderness?

What images come to mind when you think of a wilderness? I'm a Texan, so I think of the heavily forested area in the southeast part of the state known as "The Big Thicket." (It's Texas, so naturally it has to be big, right?) Perhaps the term wilderness causes you to think of the magnificent beauty of the great northwest or the towering majesty of the Rocky Mountains, which my wife and I have enjoyed hiking for many years.

Time in the wilderness for most of us means looking for a pair of boots that have been waiting for us in the back of a closet or perhaps making a quick trip to an outdoor specialty store to purchase hiker-chic apparel that makes us look the part. We put some granola bars in a backpack, fill up a water bottle, jump into our vehicle, and head out to enjoy a relaxing day renewed by cool air, the sound of running streams, and the wonders of nature.

Nothing could be further from what the Bible has in mind when it talks about the wilderness. Many Hebrew words are used to describe the various wilderness references we find in the Bible. Common root meanings are deserted, dry, barren, desolate. Yeshimon or Jeshimon is the name commonly given to the Judean wilderness, which can be translated as "the horror" or "the devastation." If you have been to the Holy Land and have seen the wilderness there, you know how fitting those names are. The ground is hard and dry, consisting of baked sand and limestone. Rainfall is negligible. Water is almost nonexistent. Vegetation is sparse. As far as you can see, the only movement you can detect is the heat shimmering off the desert floor. The air is so hot and dry that it burns your lungs as you take it in. Other than referring to it as "the place no sane person would want to spend any time," the best name for this most inhospitable environment truly is "the devastation." That's what the wilderness was in a literal sense for the people of Israel — a barren terrain hardly fit for life.

But as you read through the Bible, you discover that the term wilderness takes on a deeper meaning — a metaphorical, spiritual meaning. In the Scriptures, wilderness is used to describe a time in a person's life when his or her soul is parched and dry; when today is hard and the future appears barren; when as far as you can see there is nothing but devastation, and you wonder if you'll find a way out. Very often during that wilderness period, you feel all alone. You may even feel bereft of God's presence, as well.

One of my closest friends, a pastor named Brad, was diagnosed with colon cancer when he was forty-six. Soon it spread to his liver, and we were told that the disease most likely would be terminal. I often joked with Brad that even though we were the same age, he was who I wanted to be when I grew up. He was brilliant, full of compassion, and deeply spiritual. Brad knew God in a way few people do. His relationship with Christ was the center of his life — so much so that when I was in Brad's presence, I always felt that I was in the presence of God.

As the disease progressed, he once told me, "Robby, I don't understand. I'm old enough that I've actually learned how to do effective ministry. And I'm young enough that I still have the energy to work long and hard. At least I did before I got sick. All I ever wanted was to be a pastor. And now that I'm in my prime, it's being taken from me. I don't understand."

Brad confessed to me in an e-mail that for the first time in his life, he had a hard time praying. Before his cancer, he had prayed often and for long periods of time. But when he entered the wilderness of terminal cancer, his prayer life and his experience of God's presence changed.

He wrote, "I always saw prayer as a 'conversation.' I sensed that God was listening and responding to my prayers. Then, when I had cancer and needed that sensation, it wasn't there. I felt like I was talking out into the darkness and there wasn't even an echo. But I resolved to go on praying. I decided to pray the Lord's Prayer every night. That was all I could do, and I didn't feel God's presence when I did it."

There's more to Brad's story, which I'll share with you later. Before his death, prayer became fulfilling again, and the presence of God became real and sustaining to him. The way that he died, full of faith and comforting others who were suffering, was an example to me and to others just as the way that he lived had been. Yet while he was in the midst of the wilderness, he often had felt alone.

Brad's experience is common. When we are in the wilderness, those who are near us often do not seem to understand the depth of our pain and fear. And it may seem that God has abandoned us when we need him most.

When I have preached on the topic of the wilderness, I have encouraged church members to write to me about how they have felt during their wilderness experiences. Like Brad, people have written, "I was alone." Others have commented, "I was broken," "I was lost," "I was confused," "I was in pain," and "I was hopeless." One woman even echoed the meaning of the Hebrew word for wilderness, writing, "I was devastated."

In the wilderness you come to the end of yourself. There doesn't seem to be a way out, and you wonder if life will ever change. Without strength or hope, "Why go on?" is a question you ask yourself, waiting for an answer that never seems to come. You wonder if you ever will get through this terrible time and, if you do, if you will be better and stronger or beaten and broken.

The wilderness is that time when we learn the lessons that God has to teach us "old school" — that is, through suffering and persevering and trusting in a God whose plan we cannot comprehend and whose presence we may not feel. But there's no school like old school, and there's no place like the wilderness for growing in faith. In spite of its pain — actually, because of its pain — the wilderness is a place of great opportunity. It's where God can teach us life's most important lessons. As one of my friends told me after he went through the wilderness experience of losing his job, being unemployed for months, and battling cancer at the same time, "I wouldn't go through that again for a million dollars, but I wouldn't take all the money in the world for what I learned about walking with God."

Your wilderness will be the most difficult time in your life. But find the right way through your wilderness — God's way — and nothing will help you more to grow into a person of strength, character, and faith.

Who Can Expect to Spend Time in the Wilderness?

You, that's who. If you haven't already been through the wilderness, you will. And even if you have, chances are you'll have more wilderness experiences throughout your lifetime. At one time or another, everyone spends time in the wilderness.

When we search the Scriptures, we see that many of the people who spent time in the wilderness are the very people we find in Hebrews 11, often referred to as the "Faith Hall of Fame." Abraham, Sarah, Moses, David, and others walked through the wilderness long before their names were recorded in Hebrews 11. Even Jesus spent time in the wilderness.

Sometimes we American Christians seem to be more American than we are Christian. Often we think that following Jesus will make our lives easier and more successful — in terms of physical health and material prosperity. Some of our country's most popular preachers proclaim that living in faith will ensure that God will bless you with special treatment and favor — defining that shallowly as anything from getting a good parking space when shopping to experiencing financial abundance.

But God's purpose in our lives is not to make us happy. His Son died to make us holy. God's primary purpose in our lives is to make us more like Jesus. That's the best definition of holiness I know: being like Jesus. Making us more like his Son is also the greatest blessing God can give us. In order for us to be conformed to the image of Christ, we must suffer because he suffered. We must deny ourselves because he denied himself. We must care more about our character than our comfort because that's what we see in the life of our Lord. Instead of working to accumulate what this life offers, we must work on giving our lives away because that is what Jesus did. If we are to follow Christ and become more like him, we will have to spend some time in the wilderness because he spent time in the wilderness. (I will say more about that in just a moment.)

We have a tendency to believe that if we live right and follow Christ faithfully, we should not have to go through undeserved suffering and painful experiences. I have noticed that when life is especially difficult, people often feel singled out, as if God has specifically chosen them for unfair treatment. Often we want to know "Why me?" We demand an answer from God as to why we are being made to suffer and struggle. Sometimes the answer is simply "life is hard."

M. Scott Peck begins his modern classic The Road Less Traveled with these words: "Life is difficult." He states that although we might know this truth intellectually, most of us rebel against the reality when we experience it ourselves. In so doing, we waste precious time and deplete our limited physical and emotional strength, which would be better spent learning the spiritual lessons that the problems of life can teach us.

Being a faithful follower of Jesus will not make life easier. In fact, in many ways, it makes life more difficult. Before giving our lives to Christ, we could accept the values of our culture and "conform to the pattern of this world" (Romans 12:2); in other words, we could live like everyone else. Before accepting Christ, we could pursue happiness as our highest priority and look to "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16) to find it. But now that we belong to Christ, we find ourselves fighting constantly against our sinful nature and a fallen world that would seduce us away from our Lord and Savior. This makes life hard — in some ways harder than when we felt we were free to do whatever we desired.

All of this is to say that when life is hard, you are not being singled out. Life is difficult for everyone. And the more serious you are about following Jesus, the more you will have to deny yourself and fight against the world and its temptations. Expect life to be hard. Expect that you will go through a wilderness — probably several before your life is over. It's part of the Christian life. In fact, it's a necessity if we are going to become more like Jesus.

When I was a freshman in college, Edward "Ted" Kennedy, Jr., was diagnosed with bone cancer. He was only twelve years old at the time. To save his life, his right leg was amputated. Cards, letters, phone calls, and telegrams came from all over the world to console him and his family. The Kennedys had suffered so much, including the assassination of two of Ted Jr.'s uncles, and the outpouring of love was overwhelming. Most of the messages carried similar sentiments of compassion and sympathy: "We are praying for you," "We love you," "Our hearts hurt for you." One, however, was very different. It came from a former Green Beret. He sent the boy his green beret along with a message intended to give him heart. In the message he included these simple and direct words: "It's a man's journey. Get on with it."

Those may not be the words you or I would have sent, but they are important words for all of us to hear when we are in a wilderness. Life is hard, and it's hard for everyone. And those of us who have the idea that we will escape life's problems or that we are owed an explanation when we suffer pain and loss will fail to learn the lessons that the wilderness has to teach us. Life is not a child's game; it's a difficult journey. It won't go easy on any of us, and we shouldn't expect or want it to. Teddy Roosevelt wrote, "I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well."

Ease and comfort do not create character and strength. A life without great challenges will not grow a great faith. Because we cannot be remade into the image of Jesus without trials and pain and loss, you can be sure that you will spend some time in the wilderness.

Why Does God Allow Us to Experience the Wilderness?

This is perhaps the most pervasive and unsettling question related to the wilderness experience. Why does God allow us to experience the wilderness?

God uses the wilderness to prepare his people. God uses the difficult, desperate times of our lives to teach us important lessons and develop our character, making us into the image of his Son, so that we will be ready for the future and equipped to be his instruments in a hurting and broken world.

The Father sent his Son to save the world and change the course of human history. Jesus came to create a new future for the broken and the lost. But before he began his ministry, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he spent forty days fasting and being tempted. The Father knew that when Jesus began to preach the good news and set the captives free from the kingdom of darkness, he would be opposed by powerful men and attacked by the forces of hell. And before he would be able to declare, "It is finished," Jesus would have many battles to fight and win, both of the flesh and of the spirit. So, the Father sent his Son to that most difficult of places, the wilderness, where he was prepared for what was to come — it was part of the maturation process by which he "grew in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52) and through which he would learn to trust fully in the Father when he felt weak and tempted.

God is still doing his work of releasing the captives and saving the lost. That work is still being opposed by the powers of darkness, both human and demonic. Those who would join God in that work need to be faithful and strong just as Jesus was. Because the Father used the wilderness to prepare his Son for the life he was to live, we can be sure that he will use the wilderness to teach us the lessons that will strengthen our faith and refine our character.

It's in the wilderness that we learn not to trust our feelings but to depend on God's promises. It's there we experience that God's grace is sufficient and that even if we cannot see God at work, he is faithful to keep his word. Unlike any other time in our lives, the wilderness prepares us for difficult times ahead because it teaches us that God is faithful and trustworthy.

When I think about the preparation and teaching we undergo in the wilderness, I'm reminded of the four-wheel-drive truck commercials in which trucks are driven over the roughest terrain, making it look like the truck is about to be shaken apart. The announcer comes on and says, "This truck was tested in the proving grounds of the Baja," or some other rugged and remote place. Then the scene changes. The truck cruises into a suburban driveway, and the keys are given to a guy in khakis and loafers. The point: "We've put this truck through more than you'll ever ask it to do. And it came through just fine. It's tested. Proven. It's ready for whatever you have in mind."

That's how God uses the wilderness in our lives. It becomes a proving ground so that once we get through it, we can look life square in the face and say, "Do what you want. I've been through tough times. I've learned to walk with God, and I know how to walk in faith. I'm not afraid because I've learned that God and I can get through anything together. And I'm ready to be used for his purposes."

What, specifically, is God preparing us for in the wilderness? I believe there are two answers to this question.

1. The Wilderness Prepares Us for Blessing

One of the great truths Jesus taught is that God loves us and wants to bless us even more than we love and want to bless our own children. Comparing God to us and our willingness to give our children the good things they desire, Jesus said, "How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:11).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Way Through the Wilderness by Rob Renfroe. Copyright © 2015 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction,
1. No Way Around the Wilderness,
2. Entering the Wilderness,
3. Walking with Others in the Wilderness,
4. Walking with God in the Wilderness,
5. Avoiding Wrong Turns in the Wilderness,
6. Coming Out of the Wilderness,
Notes,