Kerry Shook - River of Blessing
Kerry Shock: You know, a while back, Chris and I had the opportunity to visit the Negev Desert in Southern Israel, and while we were in the desert, Chris was determined to go on a camel ride. And we heard there was this Bedouin who had camels and took tourists on camel rides through the Negev and the Bedouin tent was actually on Google Maps. I couldn't believe it. So we drove through the desert to a large tent in the middle of nowhere, and we met Mishka, this music-loving Bedouin. He treated us with Bedouin hospitality and then he got the camels ready.
And he picked one out for Chris and she got on with no problem. Then he looked at me and said, "This one I chose for you". And I got on my camel and it started standing up, you know, the back end goes up first, you almost fly off. And then halfway up, he kind of got stuck and he let out this loud moan and groan that said, "Why did I get this big guy"? You know, I'm going, "C'mon, you're a camel. Quit your bellyaching, you're huge. You can do it". But Mishka led us out into the desert. Here's a picture of Chris and I on our camels. She always led the way. She wouldn't let me pass her, that's for sure.
Chris Shock: Mishka told us a lot about camels. One thing he told us was that camels can travel over 20 miles a day through the desert. They can drink 30 gallons of water in 10 minutes and, in the winter, they can go for 6 or 7 months without water. Pretty crazy, right? I mean, camels were made for the desert. Kerry and I were clearly not made for the desert. We struggled and over and over we'd look at each other and said, "Wow, if we were left at our own, out here overnight, we would just die".
There's no two ways about it. It was just hard and you may be thinking that you're not made for the desert, but when it comes to the deserts of life, those times that it feels empty and barren like there's no signs of life, no hope, you feel stranded and alone, but the desert was made for you. The desert was made for me. And God allows us to go through the deserts of life so that we can find treasure there that we could never find anywhere else.
And that's why we're starting this new series that we're calling, "Rivers in the Desert: Finding the Source of Blessing in the Middle of Life's Problems". It's based on Psalms 126. So would you please open your Bibles to Psalm 126 and stand in honor of God's Word, and read along as I read this passage, starting with verse 4: "Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow with tears will reap songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them". You can be seated.
Kerry Shock: Hey, there are a couple of things the Bible tells us about the deserts of life that are game-changers. First, God's greatest blessings are found in the middle of life's deserts. We think we have to get out of the desert so we can experience God's blessings, but God wants to bring this river of restoration right to where we are, in the middle of our desert. But when you're walking through the desert, it's really hard to see anything good about the place you're in. In fact, it feels like you're in a place of emptiness and desolation, where there are no blessings in sight. There seems to be no sign of restoration or fulfillment on the horizon. All you can see is dry river beds, and it feels like the river of joy has just turned into the dust of despair.
Your river of peace has dried up and become a wilderness of worry. But don't believe everything you see. It's just a mirage the enemy uses to keep us from the greatest treasures of life. Let's look again at Psalm 126, verse 4: "Restore our fortunes, Lord, like streams in the Negev". God can bring restoration to the most desolate places in our lives. God can bring fulfillment to the emptiest places in our souls. You know, we pray, "God, get me out of this desert," and that's okay to pray. In fact, that's a good prayer that you need to pray when you're in the desert. And God will answer that prayer. He's going to get you through the desert.
If you're in the desert of life right now, God will get you through. You will make it with God's power. He will bring you through to a place of blessing. But first, he wants to bless you right where you are, even in the middle of the deserts of life. He wants to send his river of blessing right to where you are and change everything about the place you're in. You see, if God immediately took you out of every desert that you walked in as soon as you walked into it, you would miss out on God's greatest blessings, like peace and joy and fulfillment and strength and provision. I mean, you can only experience God's peace when you're right in the middle of a desert of anxiety and stress, and the heat is on, and you feel the pressure of life and it's overwhelming, and you cry out to God in the desert and he sends a river of peace that floods your soul, that settles your mind and calms your heart.
It's not that God takes all your problems away; he gives you an unexplainable gift of peace in the middle of your problems. Jesus said this in John 14:27: "I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid".
Real peace of mind and heart can't be found on a vacation to a spa resort. It can only be found in the middle of the pressures of life, when you turn to God and he gives you peace in your soul when there's chaos in your circumstances all around you. The only place you can find real peace is in the middle of anxiety. The only place you can discover real joy is in the middle of problems. The only place you can find real contentment is in the middle of waiting in your desert of delay, just waiting on God. We have to go through the desert because it's the only place where we can really find those things that our heart is truly longing for.
Chris Shock: And God's greatest miracles are found in the desert. The desert is where God reveals himself to us. That's the greatest desert miracle. It's not what he does while we're in the desert; it's who he is, it's how he reveals himself to us. We get to see God in a way we've never seen him before. The desert is a place of growth. It's a place of transformation. The desert is where he transitions me from who I am, what my character is now, to where he wants me to be, what my character needs to be. When God comes through for you in the desert, it builds your faith and it grows your character, a place that nowhere else could do that. There's one thing that's always true of time spent in the desert and it's this.
When you emerge from a desert time in your life, you will be different than you were when you walked in. You'll be different. The you that walks out of the desert will be different than the you that walked into the desert. You'll either come out better than you were, stronger, more character, more connected with God, or you'll come out bitter. Bitter at God, thinking that you have the worst situation in the world, farther away from him. You'll come out bitter or better. So what can we do when we find ourselves in the deserts of life so that we can experience a river of blessing? Well, the first thing to do is don't run out of the desert. Don't turn and run from your pain. Don't run from your pain.
Now this seems totally counterintuitive, doesn't it? I mean, this is nonsense, right? Pain is bad. I don't want pain. If pain is in the desert, it just seems to make sense that I'm gonna run out of here in any way I can. I wanna avoid hurt and painful circumstances. The problem is that some of us will struggle, all of us at some point, have tried to run out of the desert, and none of us get through this life painfree. The crazy thing is that we run from our hardships by ignoring them or anesthetizing or trying to forget for a while, maybe we just keep turning to the refrigerator or opening our laptop, we just think, "There's gotta be something else. I'm just not gonna think about it. I'll pretend that this trouble doesn't exist. I'll pretend I'm not in the desert. I'll just keep scrolling on my phone or scrolling through channels on TV," and the pain just gets greater and greater.
The pain grows stronger. That addiction gets a tighter grip. If I try to run out of the desert to avoid the pain and ignore my problems, I get stuck in the desert, just stuck there. But if I stop running from the pain and I face it, and I feel it, and I bring that pain to God and say, "God, here I am in the desert. Man, I hate this. This feels horrible. Lord, I need you". If we bring our pain to God, then he brings a river of healing right into our desert of brokenness. Look at this passage again, Psalm 126, verse 5 says: "Those who sow with tears reap with songs of joy". Now, the trouble is I want to reap the joy without ever having sown the tears.
I just want the good part without having to go through the desert, without having to learn the stuff. I just want God to snap his fingers and I'll have a really strong character, be really disciplined, deal with relationships in the way that I need to. The trouble is the only way to learn this stuff is in the desert and, too often, when I'm in the desert, I just don't want to feel the grief. I don't want to let God meet me there and experience his love for me in fresh, deep ways. I don't want to learn about character and diligence and strength. I don't wanna go through experiences that increase my compassion for others by giving me personal understanding of suffering and hardships. But how we choose to spend our time in the desert is really important. It matters. What we do while we're in the desert matters a lot. It matters to God.
Chris Shock: You see, the children of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years. How long do you think it would take if you just walked directly from Egypt to Israel, to the Promised Land? How long should it have taken, you think? I mean, I dunno, maybe they wasted 20 years. Would it take 20 years to get there? Ten years? Five years? Let me tell you something. It's only about an 8-day walk from Egypt to Israel. Egypt to the Promised Land was 8 days. It took them 40 years. Let that sink in. And why? Why didn't they just get there? Well, because they kept running from their pain instead of bringing it to God. They got stuck in the desert because they could not stop complaining.
God worked miracle after miracle after miracle in the desert for them but every single time they ran into another problem. God solved one problem with a miracle and they'd hit another and they'd say, "God? Hello, excuse me? Did you just bring us this far to just let us die"? And they'd start complaining again. They couldn't learn the lesson to trust him, to stop focusing on their troubles. Now, they complained, they griped in their pain. They wouldn't bring it to God, and that's how we know that what we do in the desert really matters a lot, so much that out of the thousands of Israelites that came through the Red Sea when God parted it, that headed for the Promised Land, thousands of people came through, two of them, only two, Joshua and Caleb, they're the only two people who entered the Promised Land, who went through the Red Sea and also entered the Promised Land.
The entire complaining generation never made it out of the desert. Wow, that's a wake-up call to me, that God takes the way I complain and spend time in the desert very seriously. And look what Jesus says in John 16, verse 33. He said: "In this world -year-old will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world". Jesus said you will go through deserts in life. Right there, I don't know why I'm surprised when I hit another desert. Why are we surprised? We think, "This is unusual. This is unexpected that I should have problems," when Jesus told us, "You will have trouble. You will have problems but take heart," because he has overcome every desert that this world can throw at you.
And for the believer, there is no pain without a purpose. We're just lumps of clay. And I'm a lump of clay and I'm just sitting there on a wheel, I'm useless. What good am I to anyone? That's what we all are, really. We're lumps of clay. But to make a lump of clay useful for any purpose, anything practical or beautiful, it has to be poked and pushed and prodded and thrown and molded and kneaded and rolled and squeezed and, after all that, it has to be baked in the fire. That's what a lump of clay needs.
And in Isaiah chapter 64, verse 8, he says this: "But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the work of clay, and You are our potter; we are all the work of Your hand". It says: "Here's our true condition. We are lumps of clay that God is molding and making into something beautiful for him, and the goal of the desert that you're in today is change". Personal transformation, that's the goal of all deserts. And, unfortunately, it turns out easy stuff just doesn't change us, does it? We aren't changed by easy things, but by challenges and hard things. So if you feel squished and squeezed and flattened today, you're on holy ground. It's a holy moment because God, the God of the universe, has his hands on you in this very moment and he is making you into what he wants you to be for his glory.
Kerry Shock: So the first thing you do in the desert, don't run from your pain or you'll get stuck in the desert. The second thing is, embrace the place. When you're in the middle of the desert of life, it doesn't mean you're not in the middle of God's will. The middle of the desert is the place that God works his greatest miracles, but when we try to run past the place, we miss the miracle. Now, Moses found himself in the desert of life. He was born a Hebrew but yet God did a miracle and he grew up as the prince of Egypt and he knew that God had called him to be the deliverer to deliver his people out of slavery.
And so he tried to do it his way, rather than God's way and it failed completely, and then he had to run for his life into the desert, and he was in the desert for years, tending sheep. He thought God had forgotten all about him, but God meets him right there in the desolate place, in the form of a burning bush. Moses's river in the desert was a burning bush, and look at Exodus 3:5 where God speaks through the burning bush to Moses. And God says to him, "'Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you're standing is holy ground.'" God says, "Moses, don't you realize you're on holy ground"?
And Moses is looking down at that sand beneath his feet saying, "It just seems like a little piece of the same old desert that I've been wandering around for years". But God is saying, "Because I'm here, this piece of desert is now a divine place". When God shows up in that place in the desert you're going through, that place becomes holy ground. It becomes a place of miracles. It becomes a place of blessing. It becomes a place of life change. And God tells Moses, "Take off your shoes and stay a while. Stop trying to race past this place and take your shoes off and embrace this sacred place in the desert you're in. Don't run past this sacred moment that you're in. I wanna do something great in your life right here".
And some of you are right in the middle of the desert today and you're doing everything you can to try to get out of it. You're trying to control it, you're trying to race past the place. And I want you to stop for a moment, take off your shoes, and realize the place in the desert that you're in right now is a holy place. We have to come to the place where we go, "God, I want you to get me out of this desert right now," and when he says, "Not yet," I just have to say, "I don't like that, God. That doesn't make sense to me, but I know you're God and you know what's best, and so I give up to you. I surrender to you".
And that's when the peace, the river of peace, just flows right into your soul. And you experience an unexplainable peace that nothing in this world can give, when you surrender to God in the middle of the desert. I love the serenity prayer. We pray it in our restoration ministry and you've all heard it, the serenity prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".
We all know that part, but the most powerful part of the serenity prayer is all that comes next. It says: "Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking as Jesus did the sinful world as it is, not as I would have it. Trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next, amen".
You see, as you get that, that I have to accept the hardships in life, I have to come to the place of acceptance when I can't change something, that when you can change something you step into it with God's power and you change it. But when you can't change something, you can't go back in the past and make it right, you can't fix something, you can't change what you've experienced, then you just accept and say, "God, I don't like it, but I accept where you have me right now. I'm in this place and it feels hot, but I know it's heavenly. God, I'm in this place. It feels unholy, but you say you're making this place holy.
You say this is a blessed place, so I'm gonna embrace this place and until you get me out of this desert, I'm gonna wait for your river. I'm gonna believe you and wait for the river of blessing that's on its way. I'm gonna believe that your promises are true. I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna wait for your blessing, God. I'm not giving up, I'm not running ahead. I'm surrendering to you. I'm not shrinking back. I'm staying right here until you bless me. I'm gonna stay here until you bless me. So c'mon, bring it on, bring the river of blessing right to me right here on this holy ground".
Chris Shock: And the third thing we need to do when we're in the desert is to step into that place of blessing. In the desert, water is everything. The place that's gonna get blessed is the place that water comes to. And Jesus compared his Holy Spirit to living water. In John 7, verse 38, he said, "Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them". So how can we align ourselves with God's purpose so that this river, God's river, the river of Jesus Christ, of his Holy Spirit, will come to us in the desert? Have you ever heard two notes played together that just clash? That just hurt your ears? I've asked for a little help here on this. Could you give us a couple of notes that just will grind at us? Yeah, feels a little eerie?
Kerry Shock: Even I can tell that that's disturbing and I don't know music.
Chris Shock: Kind of uncomfortable? This is the sound of the desert for me. I get into that desert, it sounds like this. It's just awkward and uncomfortable. It feels like, "Eugh, get me out of here. I can't stay in here". When you hear the sound during a movie, you're just waiting for something good to happen because it sure sounds like something's bad gonna happen and I wanna either turn it off or somehow fix it, settle it. And that's how we feel about our lives in the desert. It's this stressful, awkward grinding time. And now, could you resolve that by moving one key? Ahh, can you feel the relief in that? Yeah, you can relax.
All is well. Something bad isn't about to happen. We can be at peace, in harmony. Thank you so much for that. That's a picture of the desert because when two notes are played and they clash like that, in order to resolve it, one key needs to be moved. One key needs to move. And here's the thing. In this life, God is the symphony that we must tune to. That clashing noise that I hear in the desert, that's me not in tune with God.
Someone has to move and it's always gonna be me. I need to make the adjustment to find that harmony and peace with God. There's something that I need to do to become, a character trait to develop, to become in line with him. And when circumstances feel grating and uncomfortable and all we wanna do is escape or complain, we need to attune to the Holy Spirit. Those are the very times when we feel like it least, it's the very times that we need to attune to the Holy Spirit, so if you are in the desert right now, if today you find yourself in some kind of desert, I have a question for you. What are you tuned into?