Pilgrimage (6 page)

After King Saul returned to his waiting army, David strode to the mouth of the cave and stood where Saul and his men could see him. He might have been within range of their sharpshooters’ arrows, but David wasn’t afraid. If God’s promises were true and he was destined to be king, then he need “not fear . . . the arrow that flies by day” (Psalm 91:5). David shouted down to Saul, “I cut off the corner of your robe but did not kill you. Now understand and recognize that I am not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion” (1 Samuel 24:11). David took a huge risk. He and his men would be trapped in the cave with no way out if Saul ordered his superior forces
to climb up and fight. Instead, Saul recognized that David, his supposed enemy, had shown him mercy. Saul stopped chasing him and went home.

David did not go home. Nothing changed for him. He remained in the wilderness with a pack of disgruntled misfits as he continued to wait to be crowned king. And as he had feared, Saul later relapsed into paranoia and started pursuing him all over again.

How did David know to wait and not fight? I’m a planner, a worrier. I need to figure everything out and take action, not sit still. But time and again God has tumbled this Scripture verse from Isaiah into my path like a car-sized boulder: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (40:31
KJV
). The first time I encountered this promise from God was more than thirty years ago as I struggled to get pregnant. I already had one child and desperately longed for a second, but after four years of waiting, my prayers continued to go unanswered. I drifted so far into the waters of self-pity that I could no longer walk down the diaper aisle in the grocery store or share my friends’ joy when they became pregnant.

Then came what I thought was a God-given opportunity to adopt a baby. I learned of an unmarried girl with an unplanned pregnancy who was about to have an abortion. Without taking time to pray or seek God’s wisdom, I sprang into action, halting the abortion with promises to pay all of the young woman’s medical expenses and adopt her child. But all of my hopes and plans—the decorated nursery, the new crib, the drawers full of sweet baby clothes—had to be abandoned when she decided to keep her baby. I could have
saved myself endless heartache if I had consulted God first instead of taking matters into my own hands.

God continued to speak His promise to me: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” And I did wait—a total of seven and a half years, feeling much like David as he waited in this cave. But in God’s perfect timing, David did become Israel’s king. And when my time of waiting came to an end, God blessed me with not one more child, but with two.

Isaiah says of Christ: “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears” (11:3). As we surrender control of our lives and become more like Christ, we’ll also grow in discernment—and in patience. David had these qualities; Lot’s daughters didn’t. I need them. I can’t follow my own instincts and emotions or use human reasoning to know which opportunities are from God and which are not. My eyes often deceive me. From down below, standing on the shore of the Dead Sea, I never would have guessed there was an oasis like this one in the barren wilderness.

When we take the time to seek God’s wisdom for our dilemmas, He enables us to see things His way and wait for His perfect timing. Through the eyes of faith, we’ll see that Goliath can be slain—and that Saul shouldn’t be harmed. Lot’s daughters, living in the corrosive atmosphere of Sodom, had lost their ability to see.

David did the right thing—and did God instantly reward him? No. He continued to live in the wilderness. He continued to wait—as I continue to wait for many of my prayers to be answered. But like David, I know that “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength . . . they shall run, and not be weary.”

As I leave the Engedi oasis, following the trail downhill to the bus, the distant mountains of Moab glow in the desert sun, tinted the soft pink color of seashells. I take time to pray as I descend, asking God to help me be content where I am, with the provisions and the companions He has given me. Content to wait for the promises yet to come, even if I seem to be waiting in a barren place.

We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago. . . . It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them.

Psalm 44:1, 3

A N
EW
P
RAYER
FOR
THE
J
OURNEY

Sovereign Lord,

Nothing is impossible for You. You are a promise-keeping God, able to do so much more for Your children than we could ever ask or imagine. I confess that I have ignored the symptoms of my spiritual thirst for too long and failed to acknowledge my need for You. Forgive me for indulging in self-pity as I have waited, and for turning to my own solutions instead of trusting Your perfect timing. Please use this time of change in my life to teach me Your faithfulness and Your love. Thank You for your promise to rescue me and my loved ones whenever we wander away from You like lost sheep. Breathe life into my dry bones, Lord, so that I may truly live again.

Amen

4
Crossing the Jordan

Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them . . . Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.

Joshua 1: 2, 7

T
he Jordan River is not impressive. Like most tourists who envision a river of Mississippi proportions, I was disappointed when I saw it for the first time. From where I’m looking at it now, near a popular baptismal spot, an average swimmer could paddle across the sluggish green water and back again without much trouble. I’m guessing that the river was much wider and more imposing in biblical times, before modern Israelis began tapping into it for drinking water and irrigation.

But the Jordan River doesn’t need to be impressive in order to fulfill its role as a dividing line, a place of demarcation between old and new. Just as crossing the Red Sea represented freedom from the past for Israel and a way out of slavery in Egypt, crossing the Jordan meant the end of their desert wanderings and the beginning of their new life in the Promised Land. For Christians, our life-changing boundary is our baptism into a new life with Christ. We’re no longer condemned to wander through life, aimless and thirsty, or to live enslaved to the taskmaster of sin. It was no coincidence that Jesus’ baptism took place here in the Jordan River.

As Moses and the Israelites camped on the Jordan River’s opposite shore, excitement must have prickled through the community like electricity. Their dreary desert journey had come to an end; they were crossing over into a new life. But Moses was about to die, and before he did, he stood before the people to deliver a final, pleading sermon. He recalled Israel’s experience of salvation and provision in the wilderness and enumerated God’s promised blessings in the future if the people obeyed Him. Moses concluded with these impassioned words: “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. . . . Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19–20). It was the same choice that God gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: They could choose to obey God and live, or choose the forbidden tree and die.

We make the same choice when we decide to follow Christ, leaving behind disobedience and death and entering into new life. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”(2 Corinthians 5:17).
“I have come that they may have life,” Jesus said, “and have it to the full” (John 10:10). And so we choose life and cross over through baptism to plant our feet firmly in the kingdom of God. Here we can build new lives, grow and prosper if we continue to listen to His voice and hold fast to Him. Except for one
slight
detail . . . this new land is currently occupied by our enemies. Deeply entrenched enemies.

As soon as Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan, they, too, faced enemies: giant enemies nine feet tall; enemies living in fortified cities with high, thick walls; armed enemies who were unwilling to give up an inch of territory. Many of us naïvely believed that once we became Christians and entered God’s Promised Land, our lives would immediately become heavenly. We could stake out our little plot of land, sow some seeds, and before long we’d be harvesting fruit for the kingdom. But wait . . . not so fast. We might have entered the kingdom of God, but we still have territory to conquer, temptations to face, and a host of old, familiar enemies who need to be put to death.

My old habits die hard, especially the bad ones. Old patterns of thinking and behaving can be as difficult to conquer as the Canaanite fortress of Jericho. Paul talks about this warfare in Romans 8, and delivers the same type of impassioned sermon that Moses did. “If you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (v. 13). I can almost hear Paul shouting, like Moses, “Choose life!”

Sometimes it seems easier to negotiate a peace treaty and allow our old nature to live peaceably beside our new nature in Christ than to do battle with our flesh. “I’ve always had a bad temper,” we say, making excuses. Or, “The people in my
family always gossip . . . or tell little white lies . . . or hold grudges. It’s in my genes.” But doesn’t that verse in Romans 8 say
put
to death
the misdeeds of the body? That sounds like warfare, to me. It sounds like the same instructions God gave concerning the enemies in the Promised Land: leave no inhabitants. “If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land,” Moses warned, “those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides” (Numbers 33:55). I’ve felt those barbs and thorns lately, and I know that it’s time to conquer some enemies.

I’m standing at a new Jordan River in my walk with God, on the shores of new changes in my life. I’ve been wandering through a dry, monotonous desert back home in need of His direction. But just as I’ve had my fill of hiking in Israel’s wilderness these past few days, I’m also ready to leave my old life behind and cross over. I have old habits, entrenched ways of thinking, and numerous other strongholds in my life that I need to conquer. One of those battles will be to replace my image of what I wanted my future to be like with God’s vision for me. I don’t know why I’ve been so reluctant to tear down those false images. The Bible promises that “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

I want to be like Caleb, one of only two faithful spies who saw God’s vision for the Promised Land instead of what the ten other spies saw. The others saw giants and walled cities and inhabitants who made them feel like mere grasshoppers. Caleb saw a land flowing with milk and honey and enemies who didn’t stand a chance against the God who had delivered him from slavery in Egypt. When the ten faithless spies had died off and Caleb finally got to choose his promised
inheritance forty years later, he said this: “So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said” (Joshua 14:10–12). Caleb didn’t sit back and watch the younger men fight. He refused to pick an easily-won patch of land for his inheritance. Courageous? Certainly. But the knowledge that he wasn’t fighting alone fueled his courage. As he told his fellow Israelites, God is fighting for us and with us.

The Jordan River may seem puny and disappointing to other pilgrims, but I’m inspired by it. I see myself standing before a vast new territory waiting to be conquered, beginning with my own sinful habits and false images. A territory where I can plant seeds of faith and watch them bear fruit. Jesus has a kingdom that I can help build when I get home, and I don’t want to sit back in any area of my life and let younger, more energetic Christians do all the work—and have all the fun. As I cross a new Jordan, I want to say, like Caleb, “Give me the mountain with the giants!”

At the Crossroads

I love maps. Whenever I travel, I keep a map on hand so I can orient myself to the bigger picture of where I am and where I’m going. I’ve decided to travel through Israel with two maps. One is of the modern nation with its neighbors and highways, cities and landmarks. The second is a map of the region in ancient times, showing enemy nations such as Moab, Edom,
and the Philistines. Studying these two maps is very sobering. Israel seems so small compared to the rest of the world, a tiny guppy swimming among sharks. How will she survive?

The patch of land that God gave to Abraham and his descendants perches on the crossroads of the ancient empires of history. To get from Pharaoh’s domain in Egypt to the kingdoms of Babylon or Assyria, you have to travel right through Israel. When Alexander the Great of Greece or the conquering Roman emperors decided to expand toward Persia and the golden empires of the east, Israel lay right along their path. The broad, flat plains of the Jordan River where I’m now traveling provide an easily accessible highway for marching armies, then and now.