Thoughts on Wilderness Conflict

 •  4 min. read  •  grade level: 5
 
I found it one thing when God, with mighty power, let His light into my conscience as a prisoner in the world, having the joy of salvation and getting out of bondage, and quite another being there alone in the wilderness with the God who brought me out. It is one thing for God to have brought me out of Egypt; it is another thing for me to be on the other side of the Red Sea.
When He says to me, “How do you like walking with Me alone in the wilderness?” there comes in the thought of the leeks and the onions and the cucumbers. Before deliverance, it was the pinch of prison, the oppression of the taskmaster, and the escaping from the spears of the Egyptians under shelter of the blood. But then it becomes being in the wilderness, having there to learn what is in the heart.
God challenges our hearts as to how far we prefer wilderness fare with the living God to Egypt’s fare without Him. Do not be discouraged if you find yourselves on the other side of the sea beginning to count the value of a leek or a melon. You will think of them, just because you are a poor, wretched thing. God counts on what you are; He counts not to find a single amen to one single bit of grace He has given you. Do not, I say, be discouraged, but take care not to fall as Israel fell.
They fell, not because they found their hearts did not tally with God’s heart, but because of their determination to have their own will. They would have ways and resources that were not God’s, and the not seeking in brokenness of heart to know His was why they failed.
Take care it is not so with you. He can give your hearts not to know a leek or a melon. There is nothing He cannot do. If I know my God, it is not with me to say, “Oh the sorrows of the way!” but rather, “I am in the place where God would have me. I am with Christ, and it is far better to be without a leek than to be without such a Christ. I can bear the yoke with Christ.”
God can form this in our hearts for us. He wants us to look in and see that we have no resources. And we must learn it by failure or in His presence in communion with Himself.
When it was an earthly testimony, the Jew found that obedience did not bring him into poverty, but into wealth. But it was not so with the Lord Jesus, and we are heirs with Him. He was poor, yet He did not want never wanted. God would take care to feed His Son. And there is a monstrosity that comes into our minds when we think with anxious care about our wants, or think that, because we follow One who had not where to lay His head, we are to want.
Did not God take care for that Son of His? You would not in fear think of temporal need if you were in the light of the Lord Jesus. It is quite a different thing for Him to hide from you the channels through which He will care for you and His forgetting you.
Moses’ sister was in a very blessed position; the little ark had gone out among the bulrushes; she sits down and watches a blessed place for faith to watch and see what was done. If you cannot sit still and wait for God, you are not in the right position. Instead of saying, “But we have given all up; now what will the end be? How will the Lord show Himself?” sit down before God and say, “Thy ways are too great for me; what wilt Thou do?”
There is a largeness about His ways that eclipses our understanding and goes beyond our requests. If I leave God to act, He will act much more munificently than if I say, “Do this or do that.” “He that spared not His own Son... how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).
G. V. Wigram (adapted)