Isa 43:19 Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

A desert is a place of thirst and hunger. Can I suggest that Christendom finds itself caught up in a great desert? There is starvation and people are dying because they have no living waters. The desert is a place of death. It is without form and the shifting sands that are at the mercy of the wind simply gather where the wind blows it. The very landscape is shaped by the direction of the winds. This landscape is inhabited by jackals and scorpions and snakes. Without water, everything dies in the desert. In this desert it is every man for himself and each man is a law unto himself, he is lawless.

There is another kind of wilderness desert. It is the desert that the Lord calls us into. Prior to Jesus’ ministry, he is called away from his life and into the desert. In this place He fleshes out fully depending upon His Father. He suffers from hunger and thirst and He is tempted time and time again. In a sense, this was the Lord’s baptism of fire. He was there for forty days. Moses spent forty years in the desert. The children of Israel later spent forty years in their own desert prior to entering the promised land. There is a spiritual principle at work here. Moses had to learn to die to his own ways before he encountered the burning bush. He then fully enters into his ministry. The children of Israel only enter into the promised land after forty years of desert. Jesus ministry begins after a symbolic 40 days in the wilderness.

I write this to my brothers and sisters who are in their own wilderness. I consider most of the Body of Christ to be in the wilderness right now. I want you to consider what the Lord is preparing for you. You see, in a real desert the only thing that matters is life itself and what gives life. Water. It must be found. It must be sought out. It’s importance must be fully appreciated. Trivial matters do no exist in the desert. The entire focus is upon that which gives life. This kind of preparation is vital because of the darkness which even now approaches. The greatest storm of evil ever known is already gathering strength and it is taking direct aim at the Body of Christ.

When the Body of Christ emerge out of this desert by the power of the Spirit of God, they will be prepared for ministry for such a time as His coming back. Every Christian that emerges from the desert has and will discover that it is He and He alone that sustains them. When everything was stripped away, they discovered a source of water, the fountain of life, the river that makes glad and they discovered it where no water should exist. Now they have an inexhaustible supply, they always had it but now they know it. They are now equipped to follow in the footsteps of the prophet who walked out of his own desert and pronounced “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The Body of Christ is being prepared to come out of the desert and into the teeth of the storm pronouncing ” Behold the Lion of Judah comes.” Stand fast brothers and sisters, there is a purpose in your suffering and it will soon be revealed.

Psa 142:3 When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path.

There is a certain kind of comfort to be had when we realize that even giants of the Bible, men like David, men after Gods own heart experienced being overwhelmed. Psalm 142 was one of two Psalms written from a cave the other being Psalm 57. Perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed today? Maybe your situation is so dark that it is hard for you to see anything at all never mind anything good? Yet, God knows your path. He knows the road you have walked on. He knows how you ended up where you are. In Psalm 57 David starts out by saying that his soul trusts in God. He says he will find refuge in God, under the shadows of His wings until his calamities pass.

And therin lies the key to David overcoming. Even although he is desperate and his situation is desperate, he is not giving up on God. He says he trust in Him and will hide in Him until all his troubles pass. You see, something in David knew that his calamities would pass. The man or woman who has been on the road a long time knows that despite the fact that they have faced many difficulties and troubles, perhaps too many to mention, God has kept them. David also says ” I will cry unto God.” In our self-made world where we celebrate independence, it takes much humility to cry out to God, yet God hears the humble desperate cries of His children. Perhaps you need to cry out to God today?

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Joh 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

In another place God says through the Prophet “for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” It is a wonderful place to be when you can see past someone’s exterior and look into their hearts. The proud man, the man who is smug in his own outward behavior is totally blind to the fact that the Lord knows the secrets of a mans heart. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but a man can never fool God at any time. Saul was the obvious choice for King of Israel. He was tall and handsome and no doubt had charisma. David on the other hand was but a shepherd boy, just a lad, but God knew their hearts.

In Jeremiah 17 God says “But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” It is true is it not, the Lord is the searcher and the examiner of all motives? It is less about what you do rather it’s about why you do it. Jesus in John 7 was addressing the fact that they were angry enough to kill Him because He healed a man on the Sabbath. Men, so blinded by outward appearance, cared nothing for the sick man. They were the guardians of the Law and it had afforded them a position, and all they were truly interested in was their position and how things looked to other men.

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(Matt 5:13)You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

So much of American Christianity is wrapped in their flag. Yet there is a wider problem in Christendom that goes well beyond the borders of the United States. It lies at the very heart of the religion of Christianity as opposed to the reality of Christ. True Christianity is indeed about becoming by grace what Christ is by nature. Yet the history of the Christian church from the time of Constantine to now has been about how to merge the church and the state. In order to do that the church has sanctioned wars and called it ” just wars.” This is the preposterous notion that the teachings of Jesus and the life of Christ in us are suspended in times of war and that it is perfectly okay to kill and maim you enemies if sanctioned by the state. Somehow the state over-rules Christ in times it deems to be emergencies.

This is no different from the Jewish leaders sacrificing to Roman gods inside the temple so as to preserve the temple system of worship and in doing so preserved their own place in society. If the visible church had opposed wars over the centuries they would have been driven out of public life and compelled to be an underground church. And therefore the church that we now know would not exist as it would have been an underground persecuted church. It would be a heck of a lot smaller but it would be the most powerful force on the planet as opposed to the weak and anemic world version we now see.If every professing saint in  Europe had refused to take up arms in the last several hundred years, there would have been no wars, including the two world wars.

Without the support of the established religious church, war could not exist as we know it in the west. What men have created, what men have forged together is now being dismantled from the inside by outside pressures. The culture is now demanding more and more of the established visible church. If it is to survive it will be forced to capitulate and the price of that capitulation is, as it always has been, truth. Thankfully God has always retained for Himself a remnant. He will have His witness and no force on earth can destroy it not even the gates of hell.