Surviving In the Wilderness

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Man does not live on bread alone.”’ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered, ‘It says: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:1-13)

Jesus survived forty days in the wilderness. He carried nothing with him to sustain or protect himself in this time of trial. I would be better prepared.

If I headed into the wilderness I would carry a durable two quart canteen and a back pack large enough for everything I needed to survive. I would also pack some items needed to get me out of the wilderness, like a compass and a map. But one crucial item would not fit in my pack. A map doesn’t work if you have no idea where, on the face of the earth, you are. A compass does not work if you are so disoriented you cannot orient it. I would, I hope, carry with me knowledge, the kind of knowledge that can only be taught by one who has traveled the wilderness before me. If I am lost in the wilderness, my chances of survival will be very good if sometime in my life I had a teacher who knew all about wilderness survival.

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. He befriended the animals there. He avoided succumbing to the temptations of that desolate land. And he got out with his body and his soul in tact, He can teach us something about surviving in the wilderness of our lives.

A very tall and thin man named Jamie Davidson once taught me something about surviving in the wilderness. Jamie is the author of, The Complete Wilderness Paddler. We were counselors together at a camp in the Adirondack Mountains, which contain a great deal of wilderness. Our job was to guide six 13-year-old boys as they climbed 4 of the 46 high peaks in that region. All were trailless mountains. We had to find our way up Seward, Donaldson, Emmons, and Seymour using a compass, a map, some wit, a little wisdom, and a lot of sweat. Jamie was an expert. He had climbed these mountains before. But the day was boiling hot and we got lost in the hurricane blow down between Seward and Donaldson. We ran out of water by 11:30 in the morning. By about 3:00 in the afternoon, after enormous effort, we were only about 30 minutes from the peak of Emmons. But dehydration was setting in. We were dripping water from moss into our mouths. And we had to decide, “continue going up” or “quit and go down.” Every cell in my body screamed, “down. “ But my soul, moved by a young man about to complete the climbing of every one of the Adirondack high peaks, whispered, “up.” Up it was. Coming off of Emmons we had to descend a high and steep cliff. We were all very weak. The thirst was like nothing you have ever felt, I hope. I would have killed even for a Pepsi. We hiked down through the forest for more than an hour. Then we heard it--a gurgle. We ran towards the sound, as Jamie screamed at us not to drink too much too fast. We ignored our guide, threw ourselves into that cold mountain stream, and all got cramps.

Finally we arrived at a clearing. In the southwest corner there was supposed to be an old logging road. We searched for an hour and found nothing. Finally, Jamie laid the map down on a stump, oriented the compass and said simply, “That way”. We followed as Jamie, with superhuman strides, bounded through the forest certain that by simply walking in a straight line he would get us to the Lakeville-Placid trail, maybe even before dark.

It was so dark we could barely see the trail when we reached it. Without food or fire or tents or blankets we spent the night on that trail. Why had we reached it safely? Was it the compass? Yes. The map? Yes. Our determination? Yes. But even more important we found our way because we had followed our guide.

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. He knows how to guide us through the wilderness of our lives.

Good friends, compasses and maps abound in this world.

“Be prepared,” is a compass. It points you in the right direction.

“On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country; to obey the Scout law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” The Scout oath is a map.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is a compass.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven...; blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” The beatitudes are a map.

“One day at a time,” is a compass. The book., Pilgrim’s Progress is a map.

The most important map we have ever been given is the Bible. Other maps, like a commentary, reflect and clarify its insights. But you can never replace the original.

Even the original, however, will not get you across the wilderness of life without a personal guide. You will not understand what it says without a guide. You will get lost in confusion without a guide. You will not know what to do without a guide. Courage will fail you without a guide. Your human nature will fatally betray you without a guide. You will not be able to get up when you fall without a guide. You will think right is wrong and wrong is right without a guide.

The guide is Jesus. There simply is no substitute for a guide who survived. This guide spent forty days in the wilderness and he knows how to guide us through the wilderness of our lives, including the wilderness of deciding what I am supposed to do with my life; the wilderness of tests and more tests; the wilderness of trying to prove, to ourselves and others, that we are people of worth; the wilderness of coping with death and loss of all kinds; the wilderness of being betrayed by friends and feeling lost and alone; the wilderness of disease and tragedy and crisis; the wilderness of every imaginable moral temptation, drugs, sex, money, power; the wilderness of emotions that rise up in me from hidden depths, rage, sorrow, guilt, despair, loneliness; the wilderness of racism, oppression, poverty, violence, hatred, addiction.

Jesus knows the way across the wilderness of my life, and he will be my guide. Jesus knows the way across the wilderness of your life and he will be your guide--if you let him, if you know him, if you follow him.

And that is a mighty big IF. A baseball bat can hit a baseball a country mile, if the person swinging it knows how to use it. A computer can save you countless hours of menial labor, if you know how to use it. God always chooses you to be on God’s team but you and I decide if we will sign on.

And maybe, you see, we don’t want to be on God’s team. Maybe I want to be captain of my own team. Maybe I want to decide what game I am going to play and where and when I am going to play it. Maybe I am afraid I won’t get picked for God’s team--a lot of well meaning Christians have taught us that God is choosy. Maybe I do not trust that there is a God who loves me enough to include me.

If we can overcome our fear of not being chosen and if we choose to be on God’s team, Jesus will be our guide.

What is life like when you learn to trust God enough to allow Jesus to be your guide? Such a question can only be answered with stories. I will share my own stories because I know them so well• and because I know they are true.

I did not learn to trust God an follow Jesus as my guide the easy way. I doubt there is an easy way. In the early years of my life a number of painful experiences taught me that when things got rough the only person I could really depend on was me. I learned to follow me. Most of America is populated with people who are following themselves, or following other very fallible men, sometimes women, but mostly men. But over time God put me in a variety of situations where I could not survive if I did not learn to follow Jesus. I followed Jamie Davidson out of that Adirondack wilderness because I had no choice. Many of us learn to follow Jesus only when we have no choice.

About eight years ago I was just beginning to learn to trust God to empower my ministry and guide my life on a daily basis. One of the most difficult areas for me was sermons. I wrote sermons very early in the week. I still often do. The problem was that sometimes I didn’t have anything to say early in the week. What I used to do was to write a sermon anyway, something, anything, just to get the job done, in order to feel secure. It was nearly impossible for me to wait upon the Lord. But I was, slowly, painfully, learning to wait and had gotten to the point where I wouldn’t start getting nervous about the sermon until Wednesday. I could trust God, until Wednesday. That was progress.

One week I had my sermon done on Monday. I safely filed it away. It was a good sermon about celebration and joy, written because I knew there would be several groups of celebrating people at worship that Sunday.

Very early on Saturday Morning I was awakened by a telephone call. During the night a tiny baby named Marie had died. Marie’s family was in shock. Incomprehensible. Horrible. Recriminating. Raging. Despondent. Shock. I ministered to them with human presence. In the middle of the morning I was jolted y the realization that my sermon on celebration and joy would never fly. But I would have no time to write another-no time even to think about it. At 1:00 p.m. I had a very large wedding at the church, and after that an even larger reception. I collapsed into bed around 11:00 p.m. barely remembering to utter a prayer that went something like this, “Help!”

The next morning nervousness awakened me at 5:00 a.m. I stumbled into the shower. At the exact instant that the hot water hit my body my mind was hit by, it seemed, a direct revelation from God. I knew in an instant the theme and title of the morning’s sermon. The title was, “The Family of God.” The theme was how in the world Christians manage to be family when, at one and the same time, we are experiencing life’s most ecstatic joys and life’s most unbearable hurts. Within the space of a couple of seconds I knew the scripture lesson and the f low of the entire sermon. It was given as if I was a computer into which another computer had downloaded a message. I did not create the sermon. It was given to me. And the gift, later that morning, ministered to all in that congregation, whether they came celebrating life or grieving death. We were all together in one place as one people of God.

That is something of the power that is available when Jesus is your guide. Similar, though generally less dramatic experiences, happen almost every day. (By the way, when you get to the conclusion of this sermon you will be reading another “message from the shower” given six days before this sermon was first preached.)

Continuing with the everyday inspirations--awhile back I was sitting in front of the computer getting ready to write a newsletter article. The problem was I didn’t have a subject. My mind was a jumble of disconnected thoughts. So I closed my eyes and said a prayer in the form of a question, “God, what do I write?” I opened my eyes and I began to type: “Ken’s Korner:”

And as I typed the “K” in Korner I immediately knew the subject of the article. It began with these words:

“Here I am, still spelling ‘Korner’ wrong. You would think I would eventually learn. It makes me wonder, “What else am I doing wrong?”

I wrote the article on the theme of admitting mistakes and saying, “I’m sorry.” The next Sunday morning I found myself meeting with a class to admit a mistake and to say, “I’m sorry.” The article was a gift to me to prepare me to be conscious of a mistake I had made. Your life is filled with such experiences when you follow Jesus as your guide.

When you truly stop following yourself and follow Jesus a new spirit comes into your life, a spirit that is called holy, a spirit that can routinely accomplish through you what you can never accomplish on your own. One story of such ministry concerns a young man, a friend who had recently dropped out of college and could find no direction for his life. He called to say that his father had died. He was terribly distraught and told me that he wanted me to go with him to the funeral service. I agreed, not only because he was my friend but also because I knew how fragile were the circumstances of his life. He and his father had not spoken in ten years. His father was a psychologist, renowned for bringing emotional healing to his clients. But he had not been able to bring about reconciliation with his son.

Sitting with my friend at the funeral I was filled with a sense of the great tragedy of their alienation. Was there no way, now that death had separated them, for their hostility to be bridged? As the preacher spoke I prayed this question, “Can there be healing for my friend?” And all of a sudden-- it was again like I was a computer and a message had been downloaded into my memory--my mind was filled with a message:

“Tell him that the purpose of his life is to carry on the healing ministry of his father.”

I was so shocked to have my mind filled with this impossible message that I almost blurted out, “You have got to be kidding.” But I kept my cool and quietly said back to God, “I am not telling him anything of the kind. He’s too fragile to hear a message like that. Besides, he wouldn’t believe me. Hey, I don’t believe me. You are going to have to prove this one to me before I try to explain it to him.”

So much for blind faith.

A couple of minutes later the proof came to me in the form of words from the preacher that felt like an arrow into my heart. I trembled inside but knew that I would have to speak. My opportunity came on the way home from the cemetery. I have had very little experience with passing on such messages——but I had grown enough in my spiritual life to know that the guide of my life had given me my orders and would show me the way. But I still intended to test the waters. I asked my friend about his relationship with his father. His answer indicated, maybe, an openness to what I had to tell him. So I began: “Sunday I am preaching on spiritual gifts. One of those gifts is prophecy--which means that God gives one person a message that they are to share with another person. When I was sitting next to you during the funeral God gave me a message for you. I am to tell you that “The purpose of your life is to carry on the healing ministry of your father.”

I wonder if you can guess my friends response. He began to cry, I mean sob. He wept for about five minutes. I was terrified that I had really blown him away. Finally he gained enough control of his emotions to speak. My friend said:

“Twice during the past week I received exactly the same message from God, first in a feeling I could not shake and then in a dream. I could not believe the message was real. I would not have dared to follow such a dream. But now, now....”

And he reached out to hug me and the tears came again.

My friend returned, with some fear and trembling, to college. But this time his life was empowered by a vision and guided by Jesus. He finished college and was accepted into medical school and, God willing, will continue the unfinished work of his father. And the circle that was broken is being healed.

I could tell you dozens of such stories about listening to God. I could also tell you dozens of stories of not listening to God. I could tell you dozens of stories of being guided by Jesus, and I could tell you dozens of stories of refusing to follow and of stubbornly going my own way. The sum and total of it all, my testimony to you on the subject of crossing the wilderness of life, is that when I listen and follow I find my way and when I do not listen and do not follow I get more and more lost.

The most important strategy for crossing the wilderness is building a relationship of trust with the one who knows the way, the guide, Jesus. One way. to build that relationship is to become actively involved with other people who are seeking Jesus, most likely in church. Some men and women join 12-Step spiritual healing groups to find others who are seeking God with all their bodies, minds and souls. Others meet regularly to study the Bible and to pray. Boy Scouts join other Scouts in pursuing the God and Country Award. On the Sunday when I and my best friend, Wayne Robinson, received our God and Country awards, 27 years ago, we were walking down the aisle of the church with our medals freshly pinned on and we were stopped in our tracks by Ward Graves, a funeral director, a man even more serious than his name. Ward said to Wayne and me, “We are proud of you. And I want you to remember that 50 percent of the American Baptist young men who receive the God and Country Award go on to become our pastors.” I was struck dumb and all I could think was, “Not me, not me, no way, not me, maybe Wayne, but not me.” Today Wayne is a very successful plumber and I am a pastor. When you work on your God and Country Award, when you attend Sunday School and worship and youth group, when you get to know men and women who know the guide Jesus, you put yourself in a place where it becomes more and more likely that you will get to know the one and only guide who can show you the way across every wilderness of your life. God will get you to where you are supposed to be, be that plumber or pastor. Why do you need a guide? The answer is different for every person. For example, I know men and women who are trying to find their way across the desolate wilderness of poor health. They have tried everything and still feel lost. Even with a guide the journey is perilous and frightening. Without a guide men and women would have no choice but to abandon their lives in the desert of suffering. Amidst the individual circumstances of each person’s life there is a need for a guide. And the only one who knows your way is Jesus.

There is another reason you need a guide. (And here begins the conclusion to today’s sermon, as given to me this week in the shower. You judge for yourself if it is an inspired word.)

I believe that it has never been more important that women and men find the guide Jesus. The entire human family has a hostile wilderness to cross today and ‘we will not make it without a guide. If your eyes are dazzled by the materialism and the affluence of our culture you might not see the wilderness. But I tell you, this is a fearsome wilderness. What we see, for example, at the mall, is a mirage. And we do not know the way across the desert. That is one of the reasons we pretend it is not there. We need a compass, a map, but especially we need a guide. We also need men and women who are prepared to be and committed to being trailblazers, pathfinders, pioneers, scouts who, as followers of Jesus, show the rest of the people the way.

So what is this wilderness that I claim many do not see? It is all around you. You may experience the wilderness most personally in your family. In the plan of God the family is number one and children are to be the highest priority in the lives of women and men. Children and families are more important than careers and schedules and even churches. But, you will be crossing a wilderness if you try to make it so in your life. I have decided that the very most important demonstration of my manhood is that I nurture children. Just about every male human being can be a stud. It is no great act of manhood to sire a child. I am talking about nurturing a child, spending both quantity and quality time with a child, making the world good and safe for a child, giving your life for a child. The only love that matters more is love for God. It is important that I am loving husband and a good provider. I like building with my hands and playing a hard game of soccer. I like influence and authority and even the power to make good things happen. These are part of being a man. But the greatest challenge of manhood is loving children. If I were not blessed with my own, I would find others somewhere. I would adopt children, teach them, become a big—brother or a Scout Master. Every person in this congregation who has ever thought deeply about it knows how important their fathers are to them. Many of us spend our lives trying to cross the wilderness of deep pain caused by absent fathers or emotionally vacant fathers or addicted fathers or abusive fathers. To learn to be a physically, emotionally and spiritually available man in this culture, with all its contrary pressures, is like crossing a wilderness. This crossing will require all of the best resources of our manhood and it will require a guide. The only guide that knows the way is the one who said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” As God is our Heavenly Father, so men, in some way or other must nurture children. When we refuse our manhood is reduced to a caricature of the image of God that is supposed to be reflected in men.

Men and women who follow Jesus, who are protected and nurtured and loved by God, become, in turn, persons who protect, nurture and love. True disciples of the master guide, Jesus, always become guides. Followers of the master become parents, teachers, mentors, scout leaders, lovers of the soul.

Lovers of the soul break new ground, explore new territory, thrive in the midst of change, and are always focused on making the future better for someone else.

The wilderness is all around us. It is time to follow the guide and it is time to be the guide. Maybe for you it is time to begin the journey.