Have you ever seen a stone plunge into the water? As it falls into the water is stretches the fabric of the undisturbed lake. A hole emerges as the stone plummets to the deep and just as suddenly, the hole repairs itself and we are left with concentric circles stretching out in all directions like the rings of a tree until they reach the edge of the waters in all directions.

When you come to Christ you disrupt the waters. There is a violent reaction in the fabric of your world. It tears a hole in it and disrupts everyone around you. Jesus did not come to bring peace. His presence violently disrupted the fabric of this world. He came down from the heavens and tore a hole in the fabric of our existence. And forever more, His presence in you sends out concentric circles which disrupt the surface tension of your waters. The ripple effect causes trouble in a world that seeks to be left alone. He is the great revolutionary.

How many can say that when they came to Christ all hell broke loose around them? Amen, the war against darkness is not for the faint of heart. Jesus is a disrupter. Those at ease in Babylon will cry out in protest that their slumbers have been disturbed. Hell will violently oppose the works of Light that diminishes and sets to flight its darkness. Yet there is another kind of violence. Jesus says in Matt 11:12 that the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.

We saints violently oppose the works of darkness. We violently oppose our own flesh despite the fact that it wars against our spirits. We have battles within and we have battles without. And because we have the light of the glory of the knowledge of God emanating from deep within us, then we shall find ourselves oftentimes surrounded by darkness. We seem to have trouble on every side, persecuted, cast down. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. We are not destroyed, we are not forsaken. The light from the glory and the knowledge of God is life to us, eternal life, and it has conquered the darkness.

In us, God has displaced hell and sin and death and replaced it with heaven and holiness and life. And it is these concentric circles, these irrepressible ripples of disruption that flow from us into a dark world touching everything for the cause of Christ. Be encouraged saint, your very life, Christ in you, has disrupted the darkness and will continue to so so until we reach the ends of the earth, the end of our journey that takes us home.

In my spirit I can see the Holy City in the midst of a mighty desert, a wilderness place. Now I know that in my flesh I would avoid deserts. The vision in my spirit would, I suppose, be metaphorical for the narrow path that leads to life. Now it makes no sense to think that if I was seeking life that I would go seek it in the desert. Yet there it is, the church of God, surrounded by a mighty desert.

There is no way to the heart of it but by striking out and heading deep into a place where my only resource, in fact life itself, will be God. If He does not go before me I will die, I will never get there. If He is not a cloud over my head then the sun will kill me. If He is not a fire by night then I will surely freeze to death. If He is not my rear guard, then the jackals and other predators of this hostile place will sneak up behind me and kill me.

You see brothers and sisters, there is nothing attractive about the desert. It is not an alluring place, in fact quite the opposite. Will you journey there? Can He be found on the narrow path? Will He be found in the desert? Yes. A burning bush and some sand can be transformed into Holy ground, for where the Lord is, it is Holy. We go where He can be found. We are drawn by the Spirit to a place of splendid isolation. Not like the monks of old, not an actual physical isolation, but in the midst of our very lives. Being in the world and not “of,” it. That word of in this context drips with depth and meaning. To be not of the world is a splendid isolation. To be apart from all of its cares, all of its worries, all of its temptations and noise and distraction. To isolate yourself with God causes you to be alluring. And so, by being in the world and not of it causes you to be a light in the very midst of darkness and draws those who are lost and desperately seeking the Lord.

There is a generation of desert dwellers being raised, a generation of wilderness dwellers ready to rise up and come forth. A generation of saints who have counted the cost and been drawn away into the deep. Whose only desire is to seek Him with their whole hearts. They will see the glory of their God. They will behold His glory and His majesty. And they will make declarations from that place. They will, like John the Baptist declare to the world “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world.” Yet, this generation also gets to say “Behold the lion of Judah who rides on a white horse with a two-edged sword in His hand. He is coming, the King is coming! Lift up your gates ye ancient cities and lift up your doors for the King of glory is coming and He is coming soon.

This is the purpose of God’s remnant saints. We will make such a glorious noise in the desert of worship to our King. We will sing hallelujahs to His glory. The anointing of the anointed one will be upon us and the world will look into the desert and hear such a strange and glorious noise, a noise such as they have never heard before and a light that shines out of a place where no light and no life should exist, and they will be perplexed and confounded but5 in all of it God will be glorified.

Mat 4:4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

The work we do with God alone in the secret places changes us right down into the DNA of who we are. Difficult circumstances are merely the tests of the work that God has done in us, it is the depths of that work that is being measured by our trials and our circumstances. The work of God in us enables us to take the trials and the tribulations of this world and turn into into something that edifies us. Rather than tearing us down it builds us up. It is all at once paradoxical and counter-intuitive. The devil, who can only ever tear down, becomes an unwitting and unwilling accomplice in proving the work of God in His children.

When God has done a great work in a man or a woman, they are transformed and can now, by the power of God, take the blows and grow in their inner man even as the blows rain down. This is the secret work of God in the inner places of the man or woman of God. A work done in the wilderness, away from the rest of the world, alone with God. Consider Isaiah and the secret work of God in his life. His encounter with God humbles him in ways that only that kind of encounter could.

All the flesh is stripped away and now a mere man stands before God and sees that outside of God he is nothing. He cries out “woe is me, I am undone.” And in the undoing of the man, the new man of God steps out of that encounter. He would face many challenges in his life and would eventually be killed by being sawn in two, yet the work had already been done by God in his life and he had been enabled. The trials and the testings and indeed even his martyrdom simply became evidence of the work of God in his life.

Brothers and sisters, you have been uniquely designed to grow in the desert. In a place known for death, where nothing grows, you shall bloom. You shall bloom because God has done such a work in you. In the midst of your trial or tribulation, fall back upon your inner man. For that which causes the outer man to perish, renews and restores your inner man daily as you yield to God and give Him all the glory.