Find me in the Wilderness // Series Intro
The wilderness is where we leave the noise of our normal lives in order to encounter our real God, our real selves, and our real story.
Our text for these seven weeks is the story of Jesus in the wilderness, taken from Luke 4:1-13, but it’s worth us zooming out briefly to name something important from the surrounding stories.
Just before the wilderness, Jesus is baptised. His identity is affirmed by the Father and the Spirit descends on Him in power. Baptism has connotations of becoming included unto participation - leaving the old in order to become a participant in the life of the new. Jesus has stepped from His life of obscurity into the New Order - a life of recreation in the purposes and power of God.
Just after the wilderness, Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14). The wilderness is followed by a return in power.
There’s a spiritual paradigm here.
Baptism.
Wilderness.
Return.
On a macro level, Jesus inhabits the synergy of wilderness and return through this story and all that follows. 40 days, then 3 years.
But He also inhabits this on a micro, day-by-day level, through intentional rhythms that we see at work throughout His life.
Check out the following:
Matt. 14:13: “When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.”
Mark 1:35: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
Mark 6:31: “Then … he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Luke 4:42: “At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place.”
Luke 5:16: “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
The highlighted word in each of these verses is the Greek word érēmos. It is an adjective, used to describe a solitary, wild, or wilderness place.
It is a place of emptiness of our usual comforts. But it is also a place of great fullness. Digging a little deeper into this word:
In Scripture, a "desert" (2048 /érēmos) is ironically also where God richly grants His presence and provision for those seeking Him. The limitless Lord shows Himself strong in the "limiting" (difficult) scenes of life.”
~ HELPS Word-Studies
The verses above describe Jesus’ life being a rhythm of wilderness and return.
The return in power is preceded by wilderness withdrawal.
Fruitful ministry is partnered by the practices of the wilderness.
Unseen depths forge the way for seen transformation.
Mark Sayers describes this as common throughout all of revival history:
“Almost always this renewal will occur in hidden places of obscurity, in a period of isolation, in which deep roots are grown for the influence that is to come, and resilience and perseverance built for the resulting challenges.”
~ Mark Sayers
Right now, in the Covid-19 lockdown, we are in a season of exceptional potential. We could shrug it off as a meaningless vacuum before we return to normal. We could waste the time, binging on Netflix and bemoaning our immobilisation.
Or we could inhabit it as wilderness.
Because the wilderness, in Christian spirituality, has always been a place of extraordinary transformation for the hungry and the intentional. Because the pilgrim of the érēmos knows that the wilderness is not an empty place, but a place of rediscovering that which is real and important. It is a space emptied of the superficialities and distractions of the world, where there is potential of finding the life, love, and power of God Himself.
In the wilderness, in other words, we find Him.
How we journey this season will depend in great measure upon our posture and attitude towards it.
Wasted time? Empty space?
Or érēmos. A time of extraordinary potential to journey deeper into the heart of God.
“And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate [érēmos] place and rest a while.’”
~ Mark 6:31