Have you ever felt like life has dried up…Like everything was hard and lifeless, and you didn’t even know how to take one more step?

When you are in the middle of a desert season, you are actually not alone, God uses those times to speak with you.

Being in a desert reminds me of the first time I was ever in the desert, we were driving south of Israel and I remember when I started seeing the hills and I started seeing the reality of the wilderness. Suddenly the Bible and the reality of how God speaks in the desert started to come to life.

It is really interesting that when God frees His people out of slavery in Egypt, He doesn’t bring them right into the Promised land, He actually takes them into the wilderness…and it’s there they wander for 40 years. He brings them into the wilderness becasue He wants to speak to them at Mount Sinai. It is in the wilderness where God spoke to Abraham, where He spoke to Moses, David, and John the Baptist the voice of one calling in the wilderness, and it is in the Judean wilderness where the Holy spirit sent Jesus before the start of His public ministry so that God could speak with Him.

Think about that, Jesus came to the desert so that God could speak to Him.

Back to my pilgrimage journey, so while in the desert I could’nt help but think about David, he is running from King Saul, he is fleeing for his life hiding in a cave…he should be at a low place of his life and yet we see this is the time of his intimacy and clossnes with God, where he is writing his psalms, a true testament that in the desert is where God speaks to us.

In our lives when we talk about a desert season we are always talking about something negative or bad. But is it amazing that the word “desert” is connected to a place where God could actually speak to His people?

Jesus didn’t just wander into the desert by accident, He went there on purpose because He wanted to hear from God. Abraham, Moses, Isaiah they all went into the desert so that God could speak with them. And I think for a moment, as followers of Jesus we try to avoid the desert, we don’t like when our lives is hard, baren and dry….we don’t like to go through seasons when we feal isolated and so we try to get out of the desert as quick as we can…but instead of asking God WHEN can I get out of the desert, I think we are suppose to ask God, WHAT can I get out of the desert?

You know, when I look back on my life, I realize in hindsight that it was during the hard times in my life that God was actually the closest to me. When our first born got diagonised with TB, that was a hard time. And I remember so vividly standing in the desert…it didn’t look like what I saw while in the pilgrimage, it looked like a long hospital hallway – that was my desert in that moment, and as I look back on that I know that God was with me. He was closer than He has ever been before, because God meets us in the desert.

Through out scripture God meets people in the desert that’s where the presence of God is the most prevalent. 

We all face things in our lives that feels like the wilderness and although we want to avoid the discomfort of the desert,it is an invitation and God wants to speak to us there.

Jesus himself chose the wilderness beacuse He knew even while being alone and tempted, there was strength and authority gained by being alone with His father.

Nomatter how isolated today feels, nomatter how lonely you are, or what your desert mean…God wants to come and be near and speak to you right in the middle of your wilderness.

I lost my sister, but God spoke!