Sunday, 5th November 2017
Pastor Obed Sandie
God does not just call us, He equips us. When God calls us, He expects us to do something. There has been talents deposited into each one of us, no matter if we are young or old. Just like putting money in the bank, God is depositing something powerful inside us and it’s waiting to be withdraw and can be used at His time.
There are times in our lives that we’re in the wilderness, everything seems to be shut down before us. We pray, we sing songs… as a church, we come to a point where nothing seems to be working for us. There seems to be no breakthrough, but this morning Pastor Obed encouraged us that wilderness is where God wants us to be to prepare for something bigger. God answers every prayer, but often not the way we want it. Life is full of challenges, in Exodus 3:1, it says, “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb,the mountain of God.”
Wilderness is a place of preparation, Moses met the fire in the wilderness and he encountered God. When we are in the wilderness, we want to exit it, but God wants us to be in there. Not only that, God wants us to get rid of all the things we depend on, and rely on Him only. Just like how God asked Moses to remove his shoes. There are times we feel like we are stuck in a job, we feel like we don’t like this job, even though we applied for other job, God kept us in the job. Moses was stuck in the job, he was brought up preparing to be something important in the Egyptian palace but God put him in the wilderness tending the sheep. Some of us feel that we hate what we are doing right now but God puts us here for a purpose and He wants to prepare us for something better.
Moses was called out from who he was to who he will become. Wilderness is the best place to be, the place God builds up our lives, where we experience and encounter God. In the wilderness Holy Spirit empowers us to become a witness of people around us. Wilderness is like a channel that takes us to the Promised Land. It only took 12 days to walk from Egypt to Canaan but it took them 40 years. God promised Moses and the Israelite that He will take them to the Promised Land. But before they go there He needs to take them through the wilderness. When we become a Christian we need to know there is a wilderness before reaching the Promised Land.
Jesus is the Son of God but He was also taken into the wilderness to prepare for something bigger. most of the revelation of God is received as we go through the channel of wilderness. When church is going through difficulties that seem like no one is on our side, it is the time when God will reveal something He has never revealed before. Moses never wrote the first five books in the Promised Land, he wrote them in the wilderness.
When things are not working right that’s when God start to speak. Devil makes us want to quit on what God wants us to do in our lives. Christian life is an adventure because we never knew what’s going to happen. God will call us, tell us A and never tell us B, but He is leading us until the end. Wilderness is a place where God is waiting to promote us.
Right now some of us may be going through a form of wilderness, we cannot set a time frame to see when it is going to end but there is definitely a greater purpose God is preparing us for. So do not give up, do not quit, stay in the wilderness, because there are many books to be written!