Spiritual warfare is a reality of the Christian life. If you are a child of God through the shed blood of Christ, you will face spiritual attack, you will go through the wilderness. The wilderness of your life may be depression or family problems or church problems or spiritual attacks, it may even be many of these things all at once.
Christians are not immune to the struggles of this world, you will walk through the wilderness just as Christ walked through the wilderness. But, be assured, it was in the Wilderness that Christ’s sonship was demonstrated. It was in the wilderness that Christ clearly and forcefully asserted his sonship in the face of great spiritual attack. So too in your own life, you will be called to walk through the wilderness, and it will probably be that in the wilderness you will experience your greatest growth as a child of God.
In his book, The Walk, Michael Card has this to say about the wilderness,
First, realize that you cannot get out of the widlerness on your own. This is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-spiritual-bootstraps affair. Instead, I encourage you to wait for God to find you. Trust His sufficiency. After all, He is the Good Shepherd. He will leave ninety-nin perfectly good sheep to fond you and me.
Second, don’t stop reading your Bible or praying, even though it all seems dry as dust. After all, it is always dry in the desert. If you can only manage one word of Scripture, that’s enough. IF you can only utter one word in prayer, then let it be the name of Jesus, for even His name is a prayer.
If you are reading this from the mountain top of your Spiritual life or with a critical spirit, you may question Card’s conclusions. But, my guess is that if you are reading this as a wounded warrior in Christ’s army or as a fellow traveler in the wilderness, you will find word’s of comfort here. You may think you are lost and wandering in the wilderness, but the Good Shepherd is near, call his name, he will not abandon your soul to Sheol (Psalm 16:10). In the wilderness, we learn first-hand that our Savior loves us and will never leave us (John 14:18). Here, our sonship is demonstrated.
