WILDERNESS: Deliverance + Discipleship = Transformation
Deliverance must be followed by discipleship. We witness the order of the Kingdom as we are discipled into the lifestyle of the King.
Deliverance must be followed by discipleship. We witness the order of the Kingdom as we are discipled into the lifestyle of the King.
The Kingdom of God is a very different place than the kingdom of the world and the wilderness is the place where it all gets sorted out—the wheat from the chaff.
Our capacity to live in right, direct relationships with one another comes from living in a right, direct relationship with God.
Fasting, like nothing else, creates an opening for the Holy Spirit to liberate us from slavery to our physical appetites while deepening our spiritual attachment to God.
Our needs and wants will lead us like bread crumbs to our deeper longings, and because our core longings are God-given, they can only be God-filled.
God knows what we need, and he knows we regularly need retreat and refreshment. We tend to think of this as optional and even indulgent, but it is a requirement for a well-formed soul.
We need the Lord to heal our will, which we have exercised unsuccessfully and to the point of futility in overcoming bad habits.
Wilderness Lesson #1: While it’s always easier to grumble at our leaders in the wilderness, the secret to success is crying out to God.
This is the meaning of the wilderness: the strengthening of our souls in the midst of struggle through the power of the Holy Spirit.
“It is I,” says the Christ,
“I am he who destroys death
and triumphs over the enemy,
and crushes Hades,
and binds the strong man,
and bears humanity off to the heavenly heights.”
Last at the cross and the first at the tomb, the women were the apostles to the apostles—the first preachers of the gospel.