Wilderness Wisdom (4 sermons)

The Bible tells us, that of the people of Israel, the majority of them, God was not really pleased with. He loved them. He saved them. He got the Holy Ghost on them. He did miracles for them. But He was not well pleased with them, it says in 1 Corinthians 10.

It takes faith to please God. Why was God not so pleased with them? Because they were overthrown in the wilderness. When a period, which God designed for their benefit, came into their life, instead of responding in a godly way and understanding what God wanted to do, they fought, wrestled, and eventually fell and failed in that wilderness experience.

Jesus had a wilderness experience, it must be important. It can't be just an Old Testament thing. 1 Corinthians 10 says: it's a warning, a learning exercise, it's something for us to learn from, and it says: make sure you don't make the same mess ups that they made.

Wilderness Wisdom (1 of 4) Jesus, after He'd experienced the Holy Ghost and had this great encounter, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. If we want to become great in anything, there's always a season of preparation. Most of us want to just get the dream and we're there now, but it never works that way. Nothing in life works that way. There's always preparation. No one is born a great concert pianist, they had preparation. Everyone has preparation, and preparation's not nice.

Wilderness Wisdom (2 of 4) It helps if we just understand that the wilderness was God's idea, that that difficult season was His idea. All major men in the Bible had times or seasons which you would call a wilderness. A wilderness was a very dry place, full of wild animals, it was very difficult. It represented a very difficult season, a difficult time.

Wilderness Wisdom (3 of 4) If you're walking with God, you will find yourself quite frequently in transitions, changes. It's part of walking with God, because He's continually moving us on. You don't just get saved, and that's the end of it. He journeys you, because He has an assignment for your life, and He wants to develop you, or mature you, or prepare you for that assignment.

The Bible speaks of transitions all the way through, and transitions are very uncertain times. They have their challenges, and have their difficulties, but God loves us to embrace the process of the transition and learn what we can, because it's your chance to prepare yourself for the next season. Many believers totally frustrate God's destiny for their life, because when God was trying to change them, they wouldn't transition.

Fighting the Good Fight (4 of 4) Every believer, whether you like it or not, is engaged in a spiritual conflict. The earth is a spiritual battle zone, and you're either in the fight winning, or you're in the fight and beaten up. The Bible calls it a fight of faith - its a fight about what you believe.

The only thing that can move the hand of God is that we are in faith, that we are agreeing with God about what God says. We take His side in life, and we begin to learn how to live and move by faith.

Just because you have a need, does not mean God will meet it. He knows the need. He looks for faith, and faith can be developed and cultivated. Faith has an evidence in our life, so when you're operating and living by faith, it is evident.