Wilderness

Luke 5:16 But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.NLT

Wilderness….Just that word give me a shiver. I don’t like being  lost and the word just says cold and lost to me. It conjures up images of rainy windy days with nowhere to rest.
But in scripture significant things happen in the wilderness…”Now the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness”(Numbers 1:1) Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness and often withdrew there to pray(Mark 1:12), John the Baptist spoke to and baptized many in the wilderness and chose to live there(John 1:23).
The word actually means a wild and uncultivated region, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals; a desolate tract of wasteland, a bewildering mass.
What part of that sounds fun? And yet God spoke to His people and met with them in this place of desolation and bewilderment. More intriguing yet is that Jesus chose to meet with His Father in such places.
So maybe instead of dreading these places of wilderness that seem to appear whether I want them to or not, I need to be running to them to meet with God. A wonderful God, who has not abandoned me to the wilderness, but leads me there regularly, It is there in that place that I can expect Him to meet and speak to me.  A place where there is nothing but Him waiting to meet me there.

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