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Ken Schemmer



Joined: 06 Apr 2008
Posts: 20
Location: Anaheim, CA

PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 8:22 pm    Post subject: The Wilderness Reply with quote

Dear God, I look to you to do your work in me over the next forty days. I know that my heart is a dry and sinful place. It needs you to fill it with your love and your grace by washing it with your Word. Like Moses, David and Jesus I commit to walk with you and learn from you what it means to be a shepherd. I enter into the dessert place to seek you my God because the wilderness is where I can trust in you fully. “Episodes of bewilderment, abandonment, and inner reveal our soul’s restless cravings and fundamental neediness.” I want you to teach me your ways and to show me your path. I know that, “in the wilderness can lose our bearing. Or regain them.” That is why I commit to you and you alone as my Shepherd. After you lead me to the wilderness, I know that you will fulfill your promises from your word. “The wilderness can be such a catalyst for good; we may voluntarily create one for the purpose of recharging our relationship with God.”
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tdudley



Joined: 09 Jul 2008
Posts: 5

PostPosted: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:28 am    Post subject: Should we fight those times in the wilderness? Reply with quote

It is not surprising that most of us do not like to be in the wilderness. That is not our natural inclination to abide in need or pain or distress. We like comfort and calm for the most part. You are probably not so much different from me. The wilderness can be a lonely stressful environment that does not apprear to offer much in the way of growth. I know, I've been there. Never-the-less, when we hold on to God in those times of wilderness wanderings, and trust God for the outcome of what is going on, God will provide. It is always amazing to me how trust and faith in the living God brings contentment and direction to ones path. God knows much more about the location of your wilderness than you do. Control of our paths while undergoing times in the wilderness is so hard for many of us to learn, but when that lesson is experienced and incorperated in our lives, we will never be the same. Those times we find ourselves in the wilderness can be the most stressing, but also the most enlighting. I want to remember that God will never leave us or forsake us. That fact certainly helps me as I learn to trust and abide in the Lord when those desert times are around.
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gcts\mmccrum



Joined: 11 Dec 2008
Posts: 10
Location: Woodstock, GA

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 9:19 pm    Post subject: What the Wilderness Revealed about Me Reply with quote

I’m troubled by the words “Our lives can become a wilderness when experiences expose our frail and tenuous existence (p.25).”

In the past six months I feel like I’ve been living and shepherding on the back side of the desert. I’ve been there before, but this time so much dust surrounds me that I have felt lost…A tornado hit our home on May 20th. We were thankful that no one was physically hurt and that insurance provided an apartment while we rebuild. However, the blows from the trees that came crashing down on our house left major structural damage and cracks in the concrete foundation. As we watched our house being demolished and brought to the ground, we felt naked, weak, violated. Memories, stories and a few earthly treasures were all that remained.

One day as the work crews were tearing down the walls I began to see inside myself. This was a picture of me—my life, my marriage and my ministry. The stresses of life and pressures from ministry had weakened me and what I saw in my spiritual structure frightened me. Inside my walls I was weary, tired, crushed and cracked. As a pastor I’ve been so committed to ministry and doing it well, but the storms of life revealed a major structural weakness—I am failing in my intimacy with God, and my wife. God was showing me that an “extreme makeover.”

I am in the wilderness and searching for water. I am discouraged and in need of revitalization. My first year of DMin study through Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary began with a refreshing drink last January. I felt I had come to a gigantic spiritual oasis as we were mentored by shepherds in Charlotte. Now, dealing with the tornado and rebuilding process, taking on a part-time job to make ends meet, pulling off a major wedding for my daughter, needing to be there for the deep emotional wounds of my son, along with the decline in sheep membership, I feel like I’m in trouble, ready to crumble…

Is it possible that the only way out of the wilderness is to die—die to my self, my ministry expectations, my dreams? Perhaps even our church needs to die, and like Hagar, I need to walk away from “my child.” Could this storm be from God to help me regain my bearing, or to experience change? The Divine Shepherd has so much for me to know about himself and myself, so much healing to give and so much hope to satisfy. Why am I resisting? Why don’t I run to the well? Maybe I’m too tired…Maybe I think it’s a mirage...Lord, find me in the wilderness and restore my soul…Amen.
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Mike McCrum
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nance



Joined: 05 Nov 2011
Posts: 1
Location: France

PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 9:33 am    Post subject: The Wilderness Reply with quote

I realize that I am needing this place - this wilderness - to find myself. The pain and confusion of the past years has driven me to cover the pain with distractions, food, even alcohol rather than face my real need to come to grips with the God of heaven and submit to Him alone. This wilderness time is a time of fasting... removing the tv, regular weekly fasting for prayer, removing the alcohol. This is the time to let Jesus come close so that He can heal the pain and not hide myself behind the "stuff". It's not a game. The wilderness is a place where w/o guidance, there is death and I am awake enough now to realize this. I am afraid. Perhaps afraid of what the Lord is going to find in me... yet, I want to echo the Psalmist and say, "Thy loving kindness is better than life..." I want Him more than I want to be protected -- finally. Let's go. Let's walk with Him. He is utterly trustworthy. He is faithful. He will not abandon me - us. Even the pain will be the pain of a surgeon healing, not an enemy attacking.
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Oleander#1



Joined: 08 Mar 2013
Posts: 6
Location: Bermuda

PostPosted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 2:31 pm    Post subject: The Wilderness Reply with quote

For our usual point of view wilderness is a wild and uncultivated plot of land be it of forest or a desert - otherwise called today as a wasteland inhabited normally by wild animals. One classic definition is, "a place where the hand of man has never set foot."

Yet in this 40-day journey we can see that being in the "wilderness" is actually a good thing especially when the number forty is part of the experience as outlined in the Introduction (p. 17). Not only is it a place where God revealed who He is in terms of Guide, Protector and Provider, but it also reveals who we are and how dependent we are on divine assistance to survive.

It has been said that, "Preparation is never time wasted." In the wilderness, we can reflect on God's faithfulness, we can hear God speak without those many distractions and we can find rest in Him, we can find strength in Him, we can be encouraged by Him, and with Him commune. It is my sincere prayer that as God spoke to Moses in the wilderness (Numbers 1: 1) He will speak to me and prepare my heart, soul and mind, with a teachable attitude as He reveals Himself more to me over the next few days.
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