Wilderness Wooing

You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then he is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation, a rock rising above the storm.-Robert Murray McCheyne

Pastor Donna Pfeffer is leading our ladies through “”Discerning the Vouce of God” by Priscilla Shirer. Today Shirer’s lesson was on hearing God in the wilderness….. using principles from the life of Moses

I had been reflecting on some thoughts from Ann Voskamp, too, this week on being in the wilderness not because you’ve been banished but in order that you might be wooed.

“Behold I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her ….” (from Hosea). We, like Gomer, were enslaved to a paramour, the world, pleasure, ambition. But God has not cast us off. He promises to take us into the wilderness. He wants to be alone with us. Why? So that he can speak tenderly to us. Literally, the Hebrew says so that he can “speak to her heart. “. ……… Go with him into the wilderness and listen with your heart.
How many woods, how many wildernesses have we found ourselves in? Wilderness is not where God takes us to hurt us but where he speaks to our hearts. We are always safe when we are with him even in the wilderness.
Ann Voskamp