In April, I wrote an article about the kind of oil that can only come from crushing (you can read that here). For as much as we pray for fresh anointing, we don’t pray to be crushed. And sometimes we don’t realize how easily the “good life Gospel” slips into our thinking (i.e. “if I follow Jesus and I pray about my circumstances, then things should be good for me and God will protect me from suffering”).
We know from Scripture that we will suffer in this age, and I’m sure you’ve heard it said: “but the promise He gave us is that He will be with us in our suffering.” That’s true, and it is the greatest comfort we could find. But I want to flip the script for a moment, and consider that it may also be us who are present in His sufferings.
In Philippians 3, Paul writes, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”[1] Some translations say “to know the power of His resurrection and fellowship in His sufferings.” When we suffer, we’re entering into a part of God’s experience that allows us to know Him deeper, a part of Him we can only know through pain. We’re entering into something He has been very familiar with for a long time, but now we can fellowship with Him over a deeply intimate experience. We quickly grab ahold of the promises in scripture pertaining to our well-being and declare them over our lives, but I don’t see many people jumping to name and claim “the participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.”
Yes, God is very present with us in our pain—but not as a distant figure who has the luxury of avoiding suffering, or an onlooker, not even as a friend who cares but can’t relate. When we ache, we step into the very heart of God who knew agony to be present with Him there. Jesus was literally called “the Man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” [2] How could we relate to Him without ever having known any form of sorrow?
In the throes of our trials, it’s easy to ask God if He cares, if He still has compassion for us. But has your pain ever caused you to have compassion for Him? It’s a scandalous thought, I know. God is no weak creature. But He does have a heart, and He feels. He did not separate Himself from us so as to remain unaffected by the brokenness of the world. Does our pain make us aware of what He went through for our sake, what He continuously goes through now? Or does it just make us angry at Him?
Right after Paul’s bold statements about the desire to know Christ, he then makes the audacious claim that he can “do all things through Him.”[3] Again in this statement, penned from prison, he was speaking about suffering. It’s so easy to read this passage and feel empowered to climb mountains, but Paul was navigating low valleys. Before saying he could do anything, he wrote: “For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”[4]
So then, if grief paves the way for us to know our God in such a deep way, why are we constantly avoiding it?
I believe it’s because when we imagine the wilderness, we only picture the strife—we can’t imagine the treasures that flow there. We can’t imagine the unfathomable grace. So we run. But when we finally let go and lean in to it, we start to find the riches.
Your wilderness could be simply loneliness—being isolated is a painful desert all on its own. Your wilderness could be that you haven’t heard from God in years, feeling spiritually dry, or seeing emptiness in your life where you thought there would be abundance. Your wilderness could be that all your plans got demolished, and now you see a blank horizon—you’re looking out at an empty landscape of nothing but sand. Wilderness is uncharted territory, lack of direction—and lack in general.
Whatever it is, you have the amazing opportunity to meet with Him there, and this mysterious opportunity only exists for a short window of time. Not only will your desert feel short in the scheme of your life, but your life will feel short in the scheme of eternity. This age is the only time we will experience pain, and the only chance we have to glorify Him through it. Don’t you want to seize the opportunity to worship Him and to know Him? Don’t you want to look back and say that even while your heart was broken, your hands were lifted high? That you trusted Him and it was all worth it because He made good on His word? Trust burns bright in the furnace of affliction, and you will come out as gold.
The desert season is not just a time to endure scorching, it’s a time to look to the skies and watch manna fall. If you don’t see anything, go again in the morning and check the ground. And again, and again, every day until you’ve found what He wants to give you.
It’s hard for us to grasp while we’re in it, but trial is actually one of the means by which He blesses us. Through trial comes depth, wisdom, perseverance, perspective, maturity, and the best of all— the knowledge of Him. Through trial come riches even more glorious than prosperity. I’ve seen it far too many times to deny it, at this point it burns in me: sometimes the gold of refinement by fire is the prosperity. The trial is not just a test, it’s a treasure hunt.
Throughout the book of Exodus, as God is delivering the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, they go through this roller coaster of a journey while they learn to navigate wilderness. Their timeline looks like this: God delivers them, they worship Him, and then they forget what He did.[5]
For many years, the cycle repeats: Deliverance, then worship, then forgetfulness.
All the while, God sees their need and hears their cries. His pattern while He cared for His people was: Thirst, then water. Hunger, then bread. Dry heat, then Water from the Rock.
Their pattern was: Provision, then grumbling. Provision again, grumbling again. Constantly forgetting how He took care of them right after He did it, and complaining about the next need.
They despised the wilderness so much that they actually claimed they’d rather have stayed in Egypt living as slaves than be there.[6] Moses reminded them, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”[7]
God did not take His people to Canaan by the most direct route, He intentionally led them into these places of need. Geographically, the path they took doesn’t even make sense if not for the Lord. First the crossing of the Red Sea, then the multiple wildernesses of Shur, Sin, Rephidim, and Sinai. Each of these deserts held different trials for them, when God gave them the opportunity to see His miraculous power at work in front of their eyes, teaching them to trust Him.
As with most stories in the Bible, we often read this and chuckle at how forgetful the Israelites were towards the faithfulness of God, not realizing that it’s a perfect picture of ourselves. How easily do we forget how God has been caring for His people for thousands of years? When our hunger strikes, when we’re faced with our lack, how often do we forget all the many ways He’s fed us? Most of us are not the Moses of this story, we’re the grumbling Israelites.
“This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’”[8]
I don’t know about you, but I definitely always pictured huge slabs of Middle Eastern pita when I read “bread from heaven.” But the passage actually describes what was on the ground as similar to frost; thin, flaky, white, and sweet.[9] In fact, the Israelites didn’t even know what it was when they saw it, and didn’t name it “manna” (literally meaning “what is it?”) until later. Interestingly, this substance still grows in some parts of the world today. Take a wild guess as to the only place you can still find this heavenly thing…
Yes. The desert.
The ash trees in Italy still produce manna—but only in the driest, hottest times of the year. The scorching sun of the Middle East still squeezes out this substance from different plants throughout the region, literally like honey in the wilderness.[10] And we know honey in the wilderness is not only sustenance while you’re there, it’s prophetic provision for the glory to come after your training season in the desert.
Could it be that God is still saying the same thing to us now? Remember how I’ve taken care of you. Remember the sweetness of what grows under pressure. Remember how I provided every time you had a need. Remember how it was I who led you into the wilderness so I could meet you there. Remember how I’ve delivered you, and let those lessons carry you through the desert into the promised land.
Autumn Crew is the Managing Editor of FAI Publishing. She lives in the Middle East and serves a number of disciple-making initiatives. She can be reached at autumncrew@faimission.org.
[1] Philippians 3:10-11
[2] Isaiah 53:3
[3] Philippians 4:13
[4] Philippians 4:10-13
[5] Exodus 14-19
[6] Exodus 14:12
[7] Exodus 14:13-14
[8] Exodus 16:32
[9] Exodus 16:14 & 31
[10] Matthew 3:3-4