John Bevere - How Wilderness Seasons Reveal Your Calling
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So lesson eight is on the place of Revelation. Remember I said the Wilderness is refining; it’s a time of building strength, and it’s a place of Revelation. Now, this is my favorite aspect of the Wilderness, and to open this up, I want to go to the book of Isaiah. We’re going to go to Isaiah 40: «The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.» Now, do you know our translators are the ones that put the punctuation? I personally believe they made a mistake here. I think that colon shouldn’t have been there; it should have been here: «The voice of one crying: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.'» Why do I believe that? Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. So the highway is prepared in the wilderness. You see what I’m saying? Yes, John was a voice of one crying in the wilderness; don’t get me wrong, but I’m saying that I really believe this is the meaning. And that’s just a little caveat, so don’t major over a minor.
But here’s the thing: look what God goes on to say. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, «Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.» Now, the question we have is: what’s this highway? Right? What is the highway that’s being prepared in the wilderness? Watch this: this is so cool. You’ve got to look at Isaiah 35, five chapters earlier: «The Wilderness and the Wasteland shall be glad; a highway shall be there.» Where’s there? The Wilderness. And a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. And the unclean shall not pass through it. So the highway where every crooked place is made straight, rough places smooth, the mountains are level, and the valleys are lifted — this highway is called the Highway of Holiness. Why is this so important? Because the writer of Hebrews says, «Pursue Holiness, without which no man will see the Lord.»
Now, when you hear «see the Lord,» don’t think die and go to heaven, and you’ll never see God. I look at it like this: I look at it as the President of the United States. In my 59 years, I think you and I have been under 12 presidents. This is our 12th president, right? I have never, ever seen a United States president. Never in my life have I been in the presence of a President of the United States. Okay? Now, there are other Americans who work with the president every day. They are friends of the president; they get to go into his presence. They see him daily.
Okay, when the writer of Hebrews says, «Pursue Holiness, without which no man will see the Lord,» he’s saying if you really want to be in the presence of God, then you need to pursue Holiness. And I love that the Wilderness, because remember we can’t see our own impurities; the furnace of the desert is what exposes them so we can purify and enjoy his presence. And I think if people are honest, if you’re living in sin, you’re disobeying God; you’re not enjoying the presence of the Lord. It’s like, you know, if I was committing adultery against Lisa and jumping in bed with other girls, right? I mean, I would still technically be married to her, but she’s not going to share the secrets of her heart. God’s presence — whenever you hear that, that’s intimacy with Him. You know, people ask me all the time, they say, «Where do you get the wisdom in these books?» And I’m like, «The intimacy.» So that’s why I don’t want to commit adultery against God and jump in bed with the world, because I don’t want to lose that intimacy with Him. Does that make sense?
So, it’s so important that we understand that the end result of the Wilderness is God saying, «I’m giving you the opportunity to be able to come into my presence,» because God won’t have uncleanness in His presence. Why? Because if He were to manifest His glory in the presence of willful sin, you’d have an Ananias and Sapphira situation like you had in Acts chapter 5. The presence of God was so strong on Peter; he walked out into the streets — these are streets, plural — lined with lame people, sick people, impotent people, and they’re getting healed as Peter just walks by. The presence of God on him was so strong.
Okay, so that’s why God gives us the privilege of bringing us into the Wilderness; because He wants to reveal Himself more to us than we want Him to reveal Himself to us. Think about that. I want you to think about it. He wants to reveal Himself to you more than you want Him to reveal Himself to you. That’s the whole reason God brought the children of Israel to the desert. For one year, I mean, Moses’s destination that he kept saying to Pharaoh, «Let my people go,» he didn’t say «so they can go get a Promised Land.» He kept saying «that they can go to the Wilderness and worship. They can go to the Wilderness and enter the presence of God.»
I mean, think about it; that’s what caused Moses to have no desire to go back to Egypt, the most lush, rich place in the world. Moses is like, «I’m done with this place; I’ve been in the presence of God; I know how wonderful it is; nothing beats the presence of God.» That’s why the writer of Hebrews says he forsook the pleasures and the comforts of Egypt because he was looking for a reward. And his reward was the presence of God. So, Moses, when he brings them out, brings them into the Wilderness, and you know where he’s heading — he’s heading to Sinai, and that’s where the Burning Bush was. He’s like, «I want you guys to meet God the way I met Him, because once you meet God, you never want to go back.»
You see what I’m saying? So, listen to what God said. Moses brings all these people out of Egypt; they are now at the foot of Mount Sinai, and listen to what God says: «You have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to Myself. These are the words you shall speak to the children of Israel.» He was saying that to all three million of them. The whole purpose I delivered you out of the world, Egypt, is to bring you to Myself because I want a relationship with you. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, I’m watching my wife carry our four sons for nine months. I have to tolerate this absence of my son. I’m watching Lisa cuddle, «Oh, I felt him kick,» all this. And I’m like, «How come you get to do this? I can’t even see him for nine months.»
So, the birthday comes, right? The day of the birth, and I’m like, «Come on, come on, come on,» because I know they’re all boys. «Come on!» And they come out; I’m elated, right? Think about the joy I have as a father. That’s kind of joy God had. «Man, I can’t. I’ve been looking forward to this. You’ve been in bondage to those Egyptians for 430 years. I have been so excited to reveal Myself to you.» He comes down and reveals Himself, and they all run away. So there’s the real problem that causes the complaining and the murmuring, because the people were more interested in God’s blessing than they were in His presence, whereas Moses was more interested in God’s presence, and he was like, «I’m great with the blessings.»
See, that’s the way our life should be. We should be passionate about being in the presence of God, and we should enjoy the blessings that He gives us. But if we pursue the blessings and we tolerate the presence, we’re going to be in the Wilderness the rest of our life. We’re going to have the same end as Israel did, right, or King Saul had. So, in the book of excerpts when I was going through one of my wildernesses, um, you know, and I mean wildernesses, I remember the first one was — it was interesting. The first one was 18 months. I described that to you in the last session when I was trying to birth Ishmael. Right? Well, now I’m going through a totally different Wilderness. I mean, my boss, my boss’s boss, everybody was out to fire me. I’m getting blamed for doing things I didn’t even do. It was a completely different Wilderness test. The first one was just the absence of the promise; now I’m a youth pastor preaching, and I’m getting that wonderful relief of now getting to finally preach, which I’m called to do, but now everybody is after me. I mean, everybody that is important in my life, and I’m getting blamed for stuff I didn’t even do. So it’s a totally different Wilderness.
And I remember, um, God spoke to me, and how this Wilderness began was that here I am, youth pastor, we’re on the biggest television station in all of Central Florida. We’re on at 10 o’clock Saturday night. Now, you’ve got to remember, back in the mid-80s, TV was everything; there’s no social media, there’s no YouTube, there’s nothing like that. So the only thing anybody could watch back then was television. We’re on at 10 o’clock at night; that’s prime time. That’s unlike, «I want to reach the youth.» Our youth group was supporting it; our senior pastor was amazed; everything’s going great. We were doing ads on the largest Christian radio station in all of Central Florida; our youth group is growing — it is now, you know, three times the size of what the previous pastor had.
I’m out praying one morning; I’ve only been there for like 10 months, and I’m praying, and the Holy Spirit says, «I’m going to remove you from being youth pastor. I’m going to send you to the East, the West Coast of the United States, Canada, Mexico, bordered, Alaska, and Hawaii to root out, to pluck up, to build, and to plant.» I was like, «Whoa!» And I’m out praying outside, and there’s the short grass, right? And then there’s this dirt, and then there’s this tall, lush grass. The Holy Spirit said, «This is what I’m about to do in your life.» He said, «The short grass is how productive you’ve been in My kingdom up till now. He said, 'The dirt is the Wilderness I’m bringing you into. He said, 'The tall grass is the authority and the anointing you’re walking in when you come out.'»
So, I came home; I told Lisa, I said, «Man, so Lisa said, where are we?» «Are we at the end of the dirt?» And I said, «No, the Lord showed me we’re at the end of the short grass. We’re about to come into the Wilderness.» Well, the next 18 months, I mean, my direct superior did everything he could to malign my name, to fire me. So it was a totally different situation. Okay? And I remember it got so bad at one point; I felt like the Lord said fast. So I went on a 40-day fast, but what I did is I just fasted every day at lunch. What I did is I’d go up to the choir loft and just pray because nobody could hear me, I didn’t think, but I found out later they could. But anyway, it was the thing that was irritating him even more — the guy that was trying to fire me. But I then went on a stretch of seven days where I just didn’t eat any food.
And I remember I was in that stretch, and I was up in the choir loft, and I’m just praying. And all of a sudden, you know how you’re really, really praying diligently? All of a sudden out of my mouth comes this: «Lord, it doesn’t matter if I’m in the middle of a desert where there’s no one or if I’m preaching to millions; I’ll do the same thing in both places. I will pursue Your heart.» All of a sudden, bells went off, and I saw what God was doing. I said, «God, that’s exactly what You’ve been doing in me! You brought me to the place where I see You as my inheritance, my First Love, not the ministry or anything else. So when change comes, I won’t make an idol out of what You did through me previously; I won’t leave You as my First Love and the love of the ministry instead of You. My heart will stay right.» That is a direct quote from God.
Where are you in which I’m talking about this? And so, um, you know, it was a turning point for me. I realized that my complete satisfaction didn’t come from ministry. See, what happens is ministers fall in love with their ministry, and they lose sight of the fact that why are we even ministering? It’s because of our passionate love for Jesus. So I realized right then God was protecting me from making an idol out of ministry. And if I make an idol out of ministry, that means ministry runs my life; that means ministry dictates what I do; that means ministry is what satisfies me or doesn’t satisfy me. That is not what God wants for us. If you look at Moses, Moses is on the back side of the desert. Here he is trying to get Israel free in his own ability. God says, «You need a desert experience.» So he’s on the back side of the desert, watching sheep for 14 years, right? And then we read this: that God comes and He manifests. Right? And look what Moses says here: «Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight.» Now look at the word «turn aside,» because watch the next verse: «So when the Lord saw that he turned aside.» Okay? Now, that’s important — God saw that Moses was more interested in what was going on in God than anything else. Then God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, «Moses, Moses.» And he said, «Here I am.» That is when Moses got commissioned to go and set God’s people free.
If you look at John the Baptist, you will see in Luke chapter 3, it says, «While Annas and Caiaphas were high priests.» So here are these two guys doing a very religious thing; they have the most popular ministries. I mean, they are the best-known guys in the whole nation. While they’re doing that, the word of the Lord came to John — where? In the wilderness. And all the people went out to hear him. That’s what Jesus meant when He said, «Where did you go out to the wilderness to see? A reed blowing in the wind? Did you go out there to see somebody dressed up in great-looking clothes? They’re in king’s palaces? You went out because there was a man who had the word of the Lord in his mouth.» And it’s amazing what happens when somebody goes through that process, and God puts the word of the Lord in their mouth. Now they’re not an echo; they are now somebody who truly carries a message from heaven.
Okay? And if you look at my background, all they taught in my church was prosperity, faith, claiming the promises of God, the blessings of God, and our inheritance. They never talked about Holiness; they never talked about the fear of the Lord. Well, it was in that desert that God revealed the word that I would carry the rest of my life on the fear of the Lord and Holiness. So it wasn’t — it wasn’t like I could say I was taught by my pastors and their teachers and all that, because we never heard that. It was that cry in the wilderness when I was desperate that God started revealing Himself to me.
If you look at Paul the Apostle, look at this: «But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man; for I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. I went to Arabia and returned to Damascus.» I’m going to read you out of the new commentary dictionary: Why did Paul go to Arabia? This is their direct words. Experts have claimed that he withdrew to Arabia for an extended time of prayer. I believe God sent him to his wilderness for meditation and reflection on the tremendous experience he had gone through. The word Arabia occurs again in Galatians 4:25 as the location of Mount Sinai. So here’s Paul: he’s a Hebrew of Hebrews; he is a Pharisee; he’s like, «I’ve got to go to Sinai. I’ve got to make sure what I got was not…» and that’s all he knew; that’s all he knew to do. But I believe the Holy Spirit drove him out there.
And so, on the basis of this illusion, some have speculated that Paul withdrew far away into the Arabian Peninsula to Mount Sinai itself, where the law originally had been revealed to Moses. Of course, that’s true. If you look at John the Apostle, they tried to kill John the Apostle, right, by putting him in a boiling vat of oil. When they pulled him out, he came out praising God. They said, «We can’t kill this guy!» So they put him on a deserted island called Patmos, and that is where he got the revelation of Jesus Christ. If you look at David, David is in the desert, and that is where God reveals Himself as «The Lord is my shepherd.» David became the greatest shepherd of all of Israel.
If you look at all these people in the Bible, you will find out that the revelation of God, what carried them through the rest of their lives, came to them when they were in the desert. So that is why my favorite aspect, my favorite purpose of the Wilderness is that it is where God reveals Himself, and I know He will do that for you.