LESSONS IN THE DESERT.
[All of these concepts are personal reflections and paraphrases from Gene Edwards’ book, The Inward Journey.]
When I awoke, I was, I confess, in a desert.
How did I get here? Did I come here on my own, or was I thrust here against my will? I still am not sure.
But I am, as I say, in a very deserted place. Unbearably dry, hot, barren—deserted by all human life. I am, indeed, alone, in private personal suffering.
It is, I acknowledge, a wilderness. Indescribably unfriendly, unwelcoming, dangerous to the soul. I am, indeed, surrounded by danger, in battle for my very life against a raging wildness within.
I recognize this place. It is the wilderness of Judea, less than 10 miles east of Jerusalem. When the westerly winds blow into Israel from the Mediterranean, they dump their moisture on the Judean mountains, and then sweep down into the valley that contains the Dead Sea, creating a blast furnace that tortures and kills everything. How could I walk from Jerusalem and be in such a desolate place in just an hour? I can almost see the city from down in this valley, and yet I am so desperately alone.
Wait! Perhaps not so very alone. Who is that, over there? Stumbling over rocks, exhausted from hunger, on the brink of insanity. He seems to be speaking to someone—no, arguing with an enemy—though I see no one there. Through gritted teeth, He quotes the Bible: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” He groans and climbs unsteadily up a hill, and this time He shouts, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God!” He collapses in tears. What internal agony must He be experiencing right now? I might never know, except that He and I are in the same desert, perhaps led by the same Hand. Suddenly, He leaps back to His feet and turns and screams to no one visible: “Away! Leave me, Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only!’” Dropping again to His knees in exhaustion, I see a new look on this tortured man’s face. It is the look of joy. Of peace. Resolution. Whatever intense battle he has faced in the wilderness, he has won—at least for today.


Suddenly he is gone. His desert time is over, perhaps, but I am alone again, wrestling with something or someone that I can’t see. Did I imagine the whole thing? Am I the only one to experience these desperate feelings, or has someone else been here?
Someone else? Yes, over there. And old man, covered with the sores of some excruciating skin disease, with torn clothes, sits in rubble and scrapes his boils with a stone while he groans in agony. Yet, he seems to have that same peaceful, other-worldly, victorious look in his eyes. I run to him, hoping that he will not disappear before I find some answers.
“Old man!” I cry, “You are suffering, are you not?”
“Oh, yes. Trust me. I am indescribable pain. I have lost all my wealth, all ten of my children, and my health, all in one day. I am truly in misery.”
“Yet, if you are suffering so, you look so at peace.”
“Yes, I am at peace. I have never seen so clearly or been so blessed.”
“If I may ask, what did you see, old man? What did you learn?”
“I saw—Him. The Lord Almighty, the Maker.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“That I am not Him.”
“That’s it?”
“It is more than enough.”


And he was gone. I turned around and saw that I was alone again, naturally. Dryness and death was all around me, within me, upon me.
Then I heard a voice. A young man. Singing. Praises to God. Over there, behind that ridge. A small stream runs underground from Jerusalem through the wilderness and comes out here, bringing a little oasis of bamboo and reeds, and a little waterfall before dumping into the Dead Sea. This is the oasis called En Gedi, and hidden somewhere in all this growth is the youngest of seven brothers, a shepherd and musician by background, a one-hit warrior, and a man anointed as the next king of Israel. It is David, and in this wilderness he sings praise.
“How did you get here,” I ask.
“King Saul tried to kill me, so I am hiding here.”
“But you are the king of Israel!”
“Anointed as king, but not yet enthroned. There is a big difference, you know.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About thirteen years. Of course, not always in this oasis. Usually I have been in more austere settings out there, where you came from.”
“How long will you remain?”
“I can’t predict that. All I can do is to take what I am given, and wait on the Lord.”
“But you are . . .”
“Yes, the king. I know. We’ve already covered that.”
“Why don’t you raise up an army and take your place on the throne?”
“And go against the Lord’s anointed, Saul? No, thanks. God will do whatever he does whenever he does it. He keeps the score, not I.”
“But how can you sing in this God-forsaken wilderness? Aren’t you the sweet psalmist of Israel?”
“Son, did you know that I have written twice as many psalms here in this so-called ‘God-forsaken’ wilderness as I will ever write in a palace? Think about that before you judge which place is better for the spirit.”
There was a noise nearby, and King David, the mighty warrior of Israel, shot back into the undergrowth like a spooked rabbit, and was gone.


I turned to see the source of the noise, a kind of shuffling dragging sound of a log over stones. It was the first man that I had seen. He was back in the desert again, outside of Jerusalem, this time carrying—a cross.
I wanted to ask my own questions: Why am I here? Is this some sort of punishment? When do I leave? Isn’t it more blessed to be blessed than it is to be tested? There were a hundred other questions in my mind. But somehow asking them seemed unimportant now, as I watched Jesus being nailed to the cross and lifted up on it. And as he hung, he said strange things, like “My God, why have you forsaken me?” and, “Father, forgive them” and, “It is finished.”
I couldn’t remember what my questions were anymore. Somehow I had seen Him. And it was enough. For a moment, I saw clearly. The answers were not contained in my questions, anyway. The answer is—Him. Jesus. Slain in the desert before the foundations of the earth.
I guess I was not—am not—so very alone, after all.
I was joining Jacob, permanently lame from wrestling with an angel that he could not see, who worshiped while leaning on his staff. He was renamed Israel by God himself because of his experience with God in the wilderness.
I was joining Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his own brothers, and then unjustly imprisoned for years. His desert experience prepared him to be the second-highest official in all of Egypt, and to save the lives of people all through his region, especially including his own brothers who had betrayed him.
I was joining the three men in Babylon who refused to bow down to the golden idol, and were cast into the fiery furnace. Rather than preventing them from entering the furnace, God joined them in it.
In fact, being here in the desert, I join the list of saints and martyrs through the centuries; that great cloud of witnesses who together testify that faith is not based on what you see, but on what you hold onto in the night, in the wild, and in the storm. God is not surprised by the desert. He is not powerless in the wilderness. He is the Sovereign One, the Lord of the heavens and the earth. Far too often, He does not explain His purposes or His actions. But He is always here. He is Emmanuel.


Question: Have you ever been through a desert season? I don’t just mean a spiritually dry time, or a depressed time triggered by unhappy circumstances. I mean an extended time when God was absent, when you felt abandoned, when you were empty inside. Has God led you into the wilderness? If so, what was it like? What secrets did God teach you in the desert? Have you left the desert yet? If so, how did you get back out?


The thing, the exquisitely maddening thing, about God is that He so seldom explains Himself. Even when—especially when—we are in the desert, the Lord is silent in answer to our cries. What’s he up to? You never know. And the weirdest part is, maybe that’s the point.
When I am in the desert, I am forced to see myself for what I truly am. In pleasant pastures, I can spend my energies on testimonies of praise and focus my attention on what I eat and drink, what I wear, how religious I am, my reputation, intellectual studies and theology, self-control and religiosity, ambitions and goals and projects and ministry career—in short, on my outer shell. I can afford to live a soulish life when I dwell in the garden. But my comfortable habits and foods are stripped away in the wilderness, and I am left to wrestle with the very center of me while I am chewing on locusts and washing them down with wild honey. It is deep to deep, my spirit and God’s, doing business in the desert. There is really no other way for God to get me to stop long enough to see the mess in the center.
In truth, “human life, regardless of the way it manifests itself, really isn’t all that obedient to the project of being divinely absorbed.”
“Isn’t that wonderful?” (Edwards, The Inward Journey, 41).
A long reflection on the cross gives me a glimpse of what God is doing in the desert. When I see what the Father did to the Son, teaching him obedience through what he suffered, abandoning his own self for our sake, then I realize that he is willing to pay any outward price to gain inner and eternal benefits. I survey the Garden (the prayer, the sweat, the resolve), the betrayal, the injustice, the scourging, the mocking, the cross, the blood, the spear, the forsaking, the death, and the burial, and something very deep inside me catches something. And much as I would like to think otherwise, I realize that God cannot teach me the same things by blessing me and answering my every prayer. He must deliver to me a wound just as surely as he had to do it to his own Son.
Listen: there was a reason that Anthony and the other Desert Fathers chose to go to the most wasted places on the planet in order to do spiritual battle. What is it that is awakening in my deepest part here in the wasteland? Is it humility? As my self-sufficiency dies, is that God’s Spirit living in me? In my suffering am I beginning to see beyond this world and commune deeply with the Lord? In my having no answers, is the silent God planting a tiny grain of faith? Does it take a desert to do this deepest work in me? Am I becoming absorbed with God?


There was a time when I wanted to be known as a really smart person. I wanted perfect grades, and human respect. I don’t know, some sort of need for parental approval that focused on being admired by others. I pursued more degrees and a bigger vocabulary, and I was a know-it-all about any and everything. God made my intellect, but I know that was not what he wanted me to do with it. Strike one.
I learned that the Lord was more interested in what I do than in what I know. So I studied and memorized my Bible, meditated on Scripture, and set for my life certain disciplines. Secretly I wanted to be admired for my amazing self-discipline, but outwardly I tried to project a personality of humility. Strike two.
Then I discovered that it’s not what I know or what I do that makes me a good Christian It’s what I feel. God fashioned in me a heart of compassion and made me tender. I tried to have mercy on people. But then I realized that much of my mercy was because I feared people, had no boundaries and wanted respect. Strike three.
God doesn’t want thinkers or doers or feelers. All three of those qualities are elements of the soul (mind, will and emotions). But God is looking to dig deeper into me than my mind, my will or my emotions. He wants me to be mighty in spirit. And when he rebuilds me from the inside out, I forget about my precious reputation, seeking rather the heart of God.
There is a problem with the prosperity Gospel. It focuses on things of the body and soul, but not on the spirit. So what fruit does the prosperity Gospel yield? It yields people who are focused on their health, their finances, their ease of life, trappings of outward success. In short, they focus on avoiding the desert! Anything to keep from physical or emotional or intellectual suffering! The prosperity Gospel has no chance of delivering me from myself; rather, it feeds my fleshly nature even more.
Gene Edwards writes, “Most of us are either extremely sinful or extremely religious. Or both! And further, I suspect that neither one of those states pleases God more than the other. Neither impresses him. What he does in us impresses him!” (p. 53)
That’s why Hebrews 11 is full of icky details. “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” What’s that all about? Sometimes we get the good stuff in our lives, and sometimes we get none of it, but that’s why they call it “faith.” Otherwise, they’d call it “sight.”


Does true maturity ever arise from anything other than pain? I know that the Bible says that the goodness of God [can] lead us to repentance, but I also know that in my life, and in those characters from the Bible, God seems to mostly use a cross to shape His character in our lives. So maybe I’ll ask this: what percentage of your spiritual growth do you perceive to have come in sunshine, versus the amount that came in pain?


The truth is, God uses the cross to shape me into the image of Christ. It is not pleasant, but it is right. Through the cross, God puts to death my giddy false joy by making my flippant easy answers ring hollow when they don’t work for me anymore. He uses painful means to squash my overweening pride when I realize I am not as talented as I imagined and that I have truer friends than I deserve. And in turn the cross even erases my morose self-pity—yes, even my cross must go to the cross, as I place my cross syndrome on the cross—you know, that tendency to be quick to claim myself to be suffering for the cause of Christ. I offend and irritate people, and then imagine myself to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness. I selfishly misspend my money and then think myself to be sacrificially giving when I feel the financial squeeze as I tithe to the Lord. I am quick to call something a cross, because that automatically makes me a martyr.
“There is something that will never die except for the jabbing pains of adversity. If you resist, if you hold on to that deep self-centered place, ever guarding it, making sure that it is not invaded even by the hand of God, then something in you will go unchanged and unbroken throughout all of your life upon this earth. An altar, a throne room, an inner sanctuary where self is worshiped will never be cast down. Be sure . . . one day the Lord will lift the hand of protection from you, and out of love he will say, ‘Now I will allow this one to suffer.’ On that day you will begin to fellowship with Christ in his sufferings. Those sufferings had purpose in his earthly life; they will just as certainly have purpose in yours.” (65)
I have been for most of my life a “professional minister.” Because of that, the cross is especially essential for me. Professional ministers tend to be people with extraordinary gifts—personable, persuasive, positive, prophetic—and likely to be proud. Satan certainly wants a crack at neutralizing such a person, and God wants to refine and use him or her. But take note, Satan introduces temptations and trials, but he does not and cannot introduce the cross. So what does the Sovereign Lord do to refine such a powerful person? He takes him to the desert, or he nails her to the cross. Usually, the testing comes in that worker’s area of greatest strength. And when the testing comes, it shows whether the Christian worker is only a “professional Christian” or a true disciple.
The challenge, of course, is to discern whether this is a temptation or distraction sent by Satan, or whether it is a cross sent by God. I must resist the devil, but submit to the Lord. It is a mistake to think that every blessing is from God, and every difficult thing is from Satan. And when the challenge comes, of course, my fleshly temptation is to do what comes naturally. I resist. I protect myself. I lash out. I defend. My ugly side arises, and I don’t notice it because I am in the midst of a personal crisis which I am merely trying to survive. But if this cross is from God (and it is), then my response should be the same as my Lord’s response. I must receive it, trust God, learn obedience through what I suffer, forgive my enemies, and die. Die to my strength, to my dream, to my fears, to my career. Only if I die can I be resurrected.
Lord, have you sent me here to refine me? What is left of me in this lonely place? All that I thought I could rely on to feel good about my eternal state is being challenged. I am so tired of being so arrogant, and yet I hate being humiliated. For years, I have been able to charm and sing and play my way into positions of favor. And so I have a conflict of interests, that when I have the appearance of being a holy man, I win twice—I am paid, and I am respected. So, what now? Am I to the place where I can say that I have everything I need here in your presence? Or do I then stand up, take five steps away from this sacred place, and start right back to my selfish goals of pursuing my personal goals of my professional ministry?


A desert. A cross. Paul described a thorn in his flesh. Jesus is a cornerstone, and either I fall on him and am broken, or He falls on me and I am crushed. John the Baptist said that Jesus would baptize with fire, would winnow out the wicked and call all to repent. Jesus said that the Kingdom advances strongly and that only strong men take hold of it. Are all of these concepts related? I suspect that they are. The proud are brought low and the humble inherit the earth. The first are last and the last are first. My area of greatest strength crumbles underneath me, and I am left empty and desolate, broken and spilled out, humbled and dead to myself.
It is devastating to me to have my dearest friends leave the church. It leaves me empty when people who agree with my ministry philosophy reject my ministry when it is lived out. I, the arrogant know-it-all of ministry, am left alone to sort through my ideals, my popularity, my skills and find that I am empty. As a teacher, students reject me, administrators overlook me, and I, the honor student, fail at my chosen career. At home, all my perfect parenting theories crumble in the light of overwhelming need. I fail in the relationships that are most important to me. Those who know me best respect me least, and I have no reason to get up and try again. I have finally arrived at the place of brokenness, where I realize that there is no good in me.
I came here once before. As a young teenager, I came to the place of realization that I was a sinner in the hands of God, but that God loves me and that Jesus died for me. I was overwhelmed by grace and I repented and gave my empty, rotten life to Jesus. He forgave me, filled me, set my feet on solid rock, and put a new song in my mouth. And I was born again.
But this time, I am lingering longer in the desert. My theology isn’t providing me with the instant fix, the way it did the first time. I am already forgiven, but I have somehow been allowed to come back to this place, even with my Christian theology, to revisit the wilderness. What will my response be this time?
This is the place where many followers of Christ give up. When easy answers, feel-good solutions and pious platitudes no longer work, many decide to take the nearest exit ramp and head back to civilization. I have seen it far too many times to not recognize the pattern. “Touch one of those truly basic personality flaws in a believer’s life and you will encounter a surprising amount of resistance from an otherwise very dedicated Christian.” (76) How will my own faith respond? Today, I think I’d rather be a martyr. I think I could gloriously die in front of witnesses, a quick and brave death for Jesus. Just don’t ask my wife how I did at living sacrificially for my family.



I suppose the key to getting through the desert intact is realizing that God is in control, even of the cross, even of the desert. I and my friends in the ministry have this strong tendency to attribute anything that opposes our little will and our little kingdom as being the devil. But Jesus is Lord of the heavens and the earth, Lord of the Sabbath and of the weak days. He is even Lord ultimately over even Lucifer, and nothing can happen in my life without His permission. He sends the desert, still He wants only my good. So the sooner I realize that the desert is for my benefit, the sooner I can go about learning to cooperate with God’s plan for it.
God takes me into a season of the desert. He is a God of seasons, and His desire is to make me seasonless, or rather, a man for all seasons, who moves forward through it all. This is not a day in the park or a weekend in jail; it is a season. I see how seasons work in nature, so it is not surprising that I am called to go through seasons of the spirit, as well. Then, as Paul said, I can be prepared in season and out of season.
“A church cannot always be up. A people who try to ever be in an upward state of rejoicing will one day have a lot of catching up to do on the down side. An always ‘up’ church is in for some of the most positive nervous breakdowns the world has ever seen.
“The Christian and the Lord’s body both need rain and sunshine, cold and heat, wind and doldrums. Seasons of joy and seasons of sorrow. Times when the Lord is so real it seems any activity you undertake is a spiritual experience.” (114)



And what is his goal? To make me like Christ. And how was Christ? Unjustly suffering, yet without sin. “There has to come a place where virtually nothing done to you, regardless of how unjust it is, can hurt your feelings.” (78) I was the one who foolishly prayed for the Lord to conform me fully into the image of Christ. Now that he has begun to do that work, I think it is unjust. Of course it is unjust! There are things that only unjust suffering can teach me. Am I willing to learn those things?
In my early twenties, I was pretty radically committed to follow Christ, whenever, wherever, whatever He called me to. But something happened over the next decade or so. I got comfortable, craved security, and closed myself to adventuring for the Kingdom. Partly to serve my growing family, and partly to preserve my chosen career—that’s right, service to Christ became a career to me—I settled down to life in the city. No longer was I willing to meet Christ in the wilderness, so maybe he had to take me out here against my will. Like Abraham, I am called to leave civilization and live in a tent, looking for something beyond this life for my security. Rather than accumulating money, stuff, and respect, Jesus calls me to empty myself of all of it—everything—to prepare myself for eternity with nothing—nothing but him.
Here is the mystery of my life: I have gathered with God’s people week after week, I have even led them in worship literally thousands of times, and yet some deep parts of me have remained virtually untouched by the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying power. Others who know me well (thank God for real church life!) can see my flaws and sins clearly, but I am remain unchanged. In love I have been confronted with myself, and I have failed to see what others have tried to hint to me. And so I am taken here, to the woodshed, to lovingly learn from the hand of my Daddy. He custom fits a cross, just for me.
How many ways can others tell me, “Ken, you are arrogant and unteachable. You are self-centered and lazy. You fear your reputation more than you fear God’s,” and have it not soak in? I am tempted to run and hide, to lapse into self-pity and depression, or to move on to the next church, where it will take some time before people know me so well. It has to hurt, or I will never listen!
And so, goal number one is survival in the wilderness. That is plenty for starters. There I weep and groan in anguish, but I survive. But the ultimate goal, the final goal, is to learn not to become bitter, no matter what happens, but to come to a place of peace and joy in the midst of myself. To learn one ounce of humility through yet another failure starts me down the right path to the place where eventually my spirit becomes stronger than my soul.
“There is always the danger, if you have not grown up your entire Christian life in a moderated nonfanatical experience of church life, that what you are calling your spirit is really nothing more than a distorted soul.
“Time, plus the cross. Plus church life. Plus a lot more time. Then throw in a great deal of personal, firsthand encounters with Christ. Stir. Then some more time, and a lot more of the cross working on your positive nature and your negative nature. Eventually the spirit will gain the upper hand.” (122)
When we really live church life the way that God intended, we are finding that we are the most suffering, most fragile, most dysfunctional Christians I have ever known. No, maybe we are the first Christian I have ever really begun to know, and because of that, I am discovering many layers of struggle and pain. Gene Edwards suggests that we should put a sign in our homes: “Church life may be hazardous to your health.”(147)
But when we know each other well, there is another benefit to our fellowship. That is that the ones who suffer first are able to comfort those who suffer after them. When I have allowed myself to be broken, without bitterness, I can share with those who come after me how God has enabled me to overcome. And I discover that my wilderness experience is not for me alone. I suffer for the whole body. (2 Timothy 2:10) I recognize that virtually every piece of wisdom, every moment of good advice, is born from my own lessons learned during suffering.
“The young Christian college student who walked in here ten years ago to gather with a group of other believers sitting on the floor of a large living room was a Christian capable of hurting others so deeply and being so insensitive in the doing of it. The person who sits here in that same room today is not very quick to cry, very slow to correct, very good at comforting and encouraging others, very poor at passing judgment and finding fault.
“Do you think it was the books he read? Do you think it was the messages he heard? No. It was the chilly nights of the spirit that brought this change.” (160)
Amazingly, the Bible says that Jesus did not complete his sufferings. It is for his contemporary body to continue to fill up what is left. One of us will be ridiculed, another will suffer disease, another rejection, and still another unjust death. But it is assigned to his church to suffer as our Head has suffered. When we ask, “Why?” we will always receive the same answer: silence. And that is part of the suffering, part of the desert. He is making a Bride, spotless and without wrinkle, but I am not that bride alone. We are. So, for the sake of the body, I suffer alone, because, well, I can never know why, but somehow for the sake of the whole church.
A few of us even are given the calling to enter into something even darker. John of the Cross called it the Dark Night of the Soul. It is so deep, you might describe it as the moment when Jesus was forsaken by his Father on the cross. Of course, I will never be a sin bearer, but I might be called to be so alone, so very forsaken, that there is nothing. I will never know why I am so absolutely forsaken in this life. This, too, is a grace from God.
While I might experience such a dark night of rejection from the Father, just as Jesus had that Friday afternoon, I have no guarantee of when I might experience my resurrection. Jesus was three days in the tomb before he was made alive again. Joseph was some years in slavery, even in prison, before he was elevated to a position of power and prestige. Jacob was on the run from his brother for fourteen years before they were reconciled. David spent at least as much time running from Saul before he was established in the palace. I guess I’m saying that I might be crucified on Friday, and it could be years before Sunday morning comes. But I believe that Sunday will come. And as Job says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.” (Job 19:25-26) I can say with Jesus, “Let this cup pass from me . . . yet not my will but yours be done.” I can agree with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” (13:15)
And so I stay in the desert, patient for a season, however long it might last, knowing that the Lord himself has led me into this wilderness, has fashioned this cross specifically for me, and that he will use my experience to bless his bride in the end.