The Journey

Have you not brought this on yourselves
by forsaking the Lord your God
when he led you in the way?

Jeremiah 2:17

After seeing a video showing what the Judean wilderness looked like I was shocked! Instead of the flat landscape, I was expecting to see, I saw jagged peaks and dry infertile land. God literally chose this landscape for the Israelites to travel through so they would look to Him for help and encouragement along the way. Their continuous disobedience and defiance, however, kept them there for forty years. Even in Jeremiah’s time, and most notably, in my time, the lesson from the Lord speaks loud and clear: Repent, turn back to Me.

As I look back at the landscape of my journey, I realize that as I was looking ahead, I would imagine long stretches of land where I’m walking along with the Lord without a care in the world. The reality, however, was much different as I sometimes rebelled against God’s plan for my life. Periods of peace would turn into times of turmoil. The terrain would be more brutal to get through because my disobedience blocked the way forward. I wanted Him to protect me regardless of my actions just because He was God and that’s what I thought He would do. I was looking for Him in all the external places, instead of looking inside, and wasn’t being led by the Spirit because I didn’t know I should be.

Being in the wilderness as a believer is very different from what it was before I knew the Lord. Before I knew Him, I just thought that my problems and moods were related to the circumstances in my life. But now I see that like the Israelites, I created those wilderness periods by deliberately choosing not to obey and trust Him. The danger in living this way was that I became comfortable in that setting because removing myself from it meant seeing myself in ways I’d rather not see and having to face myself and my sins for the first time. Therefore, guilt became my constant companion. Although I need to confess my sins and repent, Jesus died on the cross for me, so I didn’t have to live with perpetual guilt.



God, thank you for giving me the Holy Spirit to guide me through the terrain of my life. Thank you for the nudging I feel when I’m about to go down the wrong path. Help me to change my thoughts and behavior so I can see Your direction. And thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross so I can live with hope.