Wilderness Training

Sunday 17 December
READ: Deut. 8:1-6 
MORE LESSON:  Heb. 12:1-3

Sister Kate left the pastor's counselling room weeping, and repeatedly asked herself: Why the wilderness? What am I supposed to learn from this challenge of life, which the pastor said is “wilderness training”? Five years after she graduated from the university with a Second Class Upper in Mechanical Engineering, she had not secured a job commensurate with her qualification. She had an interview two weeks earlier but the only reason why she was not given the job was because she refused to compromise her Christian belief to go to bed with the chairman of the interview panel who had invited her for a dinner at a hotel.

Sister Kate's experience is common among many believers looking for employment, admission to school or one thing or the other. Why will God allow His children to go through such unpalatable experience in the hands of some men in authority because of their faith in Christ Jesus?  Can't God, the all-powerful, cause us to get what we are entitled to without stress? Why do believers sometimes have to go through some pains to get some basic necessities of life? Kate's pastor called such experience wilderness training. It would not have cost God anything to take the Israelites to the Canaan land through the way of the land of the Philistines, which was shorter. But God understood His people more than they understood themselves. God said, ...Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea...:  Exo. 13:17-18.

In the Scripture reading today, God enumerated some of the reasons why He took the Israelites through the wilderness: to humble them; to test them in order to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep His commandments. But beyond the test, God fed them for forty years in the wilderness where the people did not cultivate or harvest. He caused their clothes and shoes to grow with them. God was also out to prove to them that He could supply all their needs without the people labouring. While it is necessary to work and earn a living, many believers do not know how to live beyond their salary. Some do not know how to wait upon God until He answers them. They are too quick to run after alternative solution. When God wants to train you to live beyond your labour, or to learn to wait upon Him, He may send you to some sort of wilderness.  I pray that you will not fail in God's training school.

Prayer/Action
* Ask for help to learn whatever lesson God wants you to learn from whatever you are going through now, in Jesus’ name.
* Pray that your wilderness training will lead you to your promised land, in Jesus’ name.
* Thank the Lord for His love and care for you, in Jesus’ name.

TODAY’S PROPHETIC PRAYER
Oh God, You who paid Israel generational arrears in one night , let the arrears of my destiny not pass this December, beginning from today, in the mighty name of Jesus.