The Wilderness Cooked

I recently listened to a talk given by a guy named Graham Cook. He is from England and grew up in a crime family until a dramatic encounter with Christ changed his life. He has been ministering for over 30 years now. While there were a few things I didn't agree with (I think sometimes people take something God is telling them about their life and what he will do for them and make it the standard for all people), he made a couple of really powerful points. One of them, about "the wilderness," I wanted to capture here. He used the sequence of events in Luke around Jesus' baptism. Here is the shortened version.

Jesus is claimed as the beloved son in whom the Father is delighted before he has ever done anything. Then, the Holy Spirit takes him out into the wilderness where, during forty days of fasting, God does some amazing revelation about himself and Jesus. Jesus is given an "inheritance word," a word from God that he can have confidence in. The enemy is then allowed to draw near and be defeated, and then Jesus walks into the temple, reads out of order a text from Isaiah (Is. 61) proclaiming this inheritance word for the next season of his life. So, what if the wilderness is where God takes people he is most delighted in?

What if the wilderness is God's favorite place to take people to strip away distractions and reveal who he really is and who we really are; then strengthen us with our own inheritance, draw the enemy (who may have been plagueing us for years) very near and allow us to defeat him, then send us out to fulfill what he has for us in this next season? He mentions that we can either go into the wilderness by design or default; by God's design or out of our own doing (Moses did the latter by killing a man in Egypt and getting exiled). But when God takes us into the wilderness by design, beautiful things (though often difficult and painful) can happen.

This was important for me to hear because I have experienced this very thing. Oh, and by the way, I, like Moses went into the desert by default, but God eventually met me there anyway. How gracious of him!