Day 38

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

—JAMES 1:2-4

I know now that the “me” who entered the wilderness 10 years ago lacked many things. I had a very superficial heart. My “repentance” barely scratched the surface. God has shown me, in his mercy and love for me, that I cared more about appearing to be “God’s good little worker” than I did about being obedient to His voice in my life. I was in love with my devotion to Jesus more than I was in love with Jesus himself. I sacrificed very little. I loved very little. I served when it suited me and quit when I felt like it. I knew little about perseverance. I lacked character and God knew it.

There were things in my nature that had to go and the wilderness was the only way to be rid of them—the way of fire, of purification, of peeling and stripping away my false selves.

There was a deep work that God needed to do in my heart—a leaving behind of some old ways—false and shallow, and a rebirth of sorts. I needed, once again, to be made new. I needed to re-become who I was meant to be and that could only happen in the desert.

“A thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and resown.”

—CS Lewis

It is a painful joy to be ploughed up and resown, but a joy all the same. I do not want to be who I was before. 10 years from now I hope not to be who I am now. I am thankful for the way of the desert that my Lord uses to purify me.

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children... God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

—HEBREWS 12:5-11