18. The Portal in the Wilderness

“I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning…” (1 John 2:14a)

When we ponder Abraham’s life and significance, it’s important to realize that he is part of each disciple’s life, and each disciple is a part of his! We must not see him merely as a blurry historical figure from the distant past. God joins all true disciples to him and to all that was birthed out of God’s Covenant bond with him.

But to relate to God the way Abraham did…in a living, life-transforming, world-changing way, we need to receive from Him, the same kind of deep, intimate, highly personal interactive bond that he had with God’s living Word. There are many who know many things about God. But there are few who know what Abraham knew, as He knew it. He was one of those fathers that knew God Himself, intimately and personally. He didn’t just know some things about God, things that in some way related to God. Abraham knew God’s living Word Himself!

“Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and (God’s Word) said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.’

“Abram fell on his face; and God (through His Word, actually) talked with him…” (Genesis 17:1-3 Amplification and emphasis added.)

The personal love bond God’s living Word had with His Covenant friend Abraham, was the Root from which Israel’s ‘Olive Tree’ emerged. That is what the apostle Paul refers to in Romans 11:17-18 when he writes to non-Jewish people that had become disciples of Israel’s Messiah:

“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the Root, but the Root supports you.”

The Root is that precious living eternal covenant union with God’s living Word which delivered Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all other redeemed humans from the coils of the Serpent. They are grafted into union with God through the obedience that comes from a true faith in God’s Word. To abide with God at such a depth requires obedient submission to the Word and much personal interactive prayer and some gut-wrenching boot camp training experiences.

If we compare knowing God in this living way to the knowledge of electricity, then we’re not talking about the kind of knowledge that comes from listening to dead, dry lectures about God in crowded auditoriums. We’re not talking about memorizing and spouting from some holy book. We’re not talking about following religious rituals and routines. We’re not talking about giving intellectual assent and agreement to some form of teaching and doctrine. Those are all religious things that are created and may or may not be truly ‘about’ God. We’re not talking about any of that. We’re talking about a connection with One that is Eternal and Uncreated and Almighty. He is the living, creative Word of the living God…whose ‘Face’ no creature is able to ‘see’.

This is knowledge similar to what comes into you when you have a ‘hot’ electrical wire in your hands and you’re feeling the surge of electric voltage shooting throughout your entire being! It is a living, dynamic, inexpressible, overwhelming, life-changing kind of knowledge that is impossible to ‘get your mind around’ or explain or convey to anyone else. We can’t really know God in this way and at this level if our understanding and experience of Him comes only from our own intellectual cobwebs or the reading of books written by men, or hearing other people talk to us about Him. That isn’t the kind of deep ‘Root-relationship’ that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses and the prophets and apostles of Israel had with the Creator of the universe. Their’s was a knowledge of and relationship with, the living Word of God…that only God Himself can give, to us. It comes directly from God Himself…and He deals with you ‘from the inside out’, in a way that nothing else can duplicate or equal.

There Can Be No ‘Go-betweens’

The ancients didn’t have to read books or consult special spiritual gurus in order to learn what they knew. Their knowledge didn’t depend on objective, conceptual ideas or theological propositions about God. Their knowledge didn’t come from other men. The fathers of our Faith were pierced, penetrated and impregnated by the Living God Himself! He spoke His living Word directly into them…and the Word electrified and pierced, penetrated and impregnated the depths of their innermost being with His own uncreated Presence! And they bore the world-changing Fruit He was able to produce in them.

They received a very intimate, personal Self-Revelation…the knowledge of ‘Him who has been from the beginning.’ It didn’t come to them from the outside-in. It was an intimate, shocking encounter that they experienced with God’s incomprehensible living Presence that began topenetrate and transform them from the inside-out!

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. For I would have you know, 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 I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ!” (Galatians 1:8-12)

If God has invaded your space the way He did to Saul of Tarsus, then you’ll be able to relate personally to Abraham and others like him in the Bible. You’ll understand the enormous changes they underwent and why God was able to change the entire world through what He put into them. But until you too know God in that way, mere words about Him will remain mostly empty and meaningless. And you will not experience within yourself the ‘Fruit’ or sure signs of salvation and redemption that God will require you to show Him when you stand before Him in Judgment and He asks: “How much has My Son, My living Word, been allowed to pierce, penetrate and impregnate you with His Life?”

The Point of No Return

After God’s Word pierced and penetrated Abraham, he was never the same. The passionate love for God that developed in his heart compelled him to drop everything he knew and cared about, prior to that electrifying moment. Love compelled him to obey and follow His Lord and Master…and a spiritual Portal or Gateway that led into eternity and infinity opened up before his spiritual eyes. The Lord showed him the eternal Heavenly dimensions that await us all… on the other side of that Portal. And for Abraham, that inner revelation was a point of no return. The inexpressible magnitude and enormity the Lord placed before him made it impossible for him to return to his former existence. He had to follow God’s living Word into the Great Unknown. So from then on, he was a nomad. There was no longer a place in this world into which he could fit or with which he could identify. So he never reached the end of his quest as long as he lived in this world. That’s because there’s no end to knowing God as He REALLY IS! And so God kept leading Abraham further and further into the future fulfillment of all He intended to give him.

The world that lies beyond that portal that opened up for Abraham doesn’t depend on this fallen world for anything. So when the ancients passed through it, they had to make a total break with their past and their earthly, Sin-corrupted origins. This meant ‘death’ to their former understandings and patterns of life. This required them to make an exodus, a total ‘crossing over’ from one world and kingdom to another. The eternal world the Lord led them into, runs parallel to the time and space world they had to leave behind. But the world that is on the other side of the portal does not depend on this temporal world for anything. In fact, this time and space world originated in and came from that other world that comes from God and abides with Him, in eternity:

“In the beginning God (through His living Word) created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” Genesis 1:1-4 Emphasis added.)

Many centuries after Abraham’s time, one of his Israelite descendants by the name of Nicodemas also encountered God’s living Word. We’ve already discussed the living Word’s encounter with this well-established, highly trained religious leader. But there was a difference between Nicodemas and Abram. When the living Word of God first made Himself known to Abram, he was a pagan moon worshipper. But Nicodemas was a leader of Israel, as educated and traditionally grounded and as religious as a Jew of the first century could be. He knew many things about God from his schools and teachers…conceptual, theological things. But he didn’t know God, ‘electrically!

Because Nicodemas lacked that Abrahamic level of experience with God’s living Word, when the living Word that had appeared to Abraham was actually before him, in the humanity of Rabbi Yeshua, Nicodemas was not able to recognize Him for who He really is. What he had studied in the written pages of the Torah and heard from his human teachers did not equip or prepare him to make that connection. He didn’t recognize Yeshua as being the very same living Word of God that had electrified Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! That’s why he couldn’t fathom what Rabbi Yeshua was saying to him. It was alien and incomprehensible to him.

But Yeshua wasn’t saying anything new or introducing a deviant, heretical religion! He was describing the New Covenant that God had promised to make with Israel, centuries before through Moses and later prophets like Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel! In Deuteronomy Moses had written about Him and warned Israel that He was coming:

 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him. This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice (living Word) of the Lord my God, let me not see this great Fire anymore, or I will die.’ The Lord said to me, ‘They have spoken well. I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which He shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him!” (Deut. 18:15-19)

Through subsequent prophets, God continued to speak of Him and prepare the hearts of His people to be ready for the era of the New Covenant that their Messiah would come to introduce and fulfill. But…when God’s living Word actually stood in the midst of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses… all of whom knew Him well…most of the first century Israelites, including Nicodemas, had not been prepared and predisposed by their teachers and sages and studies and rituals to recognize and embrace the one that all those other things were supposed to reveal and prepare Israel to recognize and embrace!

The New Covenant was meant to restore and totally fulfill that precious pristine image and likeness of God humanity. It was meant to bring back to Israel that awesome Abrahamic relationship level with God that he and the other fathers of the Faith once had. It was the electrifying level of relationship that the first Exodus generation lost sight of when they initiated the golden calf debacle. Throughout their subsequent wanderings in the wilderness and throughout the following centuries, the connection most of Israel had with God’s living Word was like a dysfunctional romantic relationship…on today…off tomorrow…then on once more, and later, off again. So through the centuries, God sent His Word to one prophet after another to reveal what He was going to do for and through His Chosen People through the New Covenant:

 “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the Lord. ‘But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the Lord, ‘I will put My Law  (Torah) within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,’ declares the Lord, ‘for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jer. 31:31-34)

Through Jeremiah, God reminds Israel of that beautiful, pure, pristine Covenant relationship that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had with His Word and reminds them again that they had lost sight of Him and became ‘decapitated’ once again. So He promised to make a New Covenant through His living Word that would restore to Israel that original, intimate, image and likeness of God Abrahamic relationship that He always intended to have with mankind:

  “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…’” (Gen. 1:26a)

The New Covenant was going to restore people like the very religious Nicodemas who only knew many things about God, back to Abraham’s kind of ‘knowing God Himself’ kind of relationship. God wants His People to actually know HIM, not just a lot of things about Him. But at first, when God’s living Word was before him, Nicodemas was personally disconnected (unplugged) from the electricity of God’s living Word and Holy Spirit. So in that sense, this representative of Israel was ‘decapitated’ or ‘disconnected’ from God’s living Word in a very practical living, New Covenant sense. And there are many like him today, both among God’s Chosen Jewish and non-Jewish people. Even after God spiritually connects and regenerates people, they still remain personally disconnected from God’s living Word. They fail to renew and update their minds; they fail to catch up with the new reality and life and status that being one with God makes possible. So they remain mentally and emotionally separated from God’s living Word, Yeshua Himself. And they settle for studying about God and participating in one of the ‘World Religions’.

The Serpent continues to use the Sin residue and its corruption that remains in our flesh, to hypnotize us into seeing, thinking and reacting in our old ‘decapitated’ or ‘disconnected’ ways. In that state, we feel chronically alone and isolated, incomplete, insatiably needy, and always unfulfilled. We habitually see, understand, define and grasp everything from worldly self-centered, radically independent perspectives. That’s why we keep trying to ‘seek after God’ and in the meantime, while we still seek Him, try to manage, structure and control everything we touch…as if everything depended on us and our efforts…that always fall maddeningly short and remain inadequate.

So God keeps sending His living Word to Israel and to the rest of the world, again and again and again. Throughout history, whenever His People fall back into that terrible radical separation from Him, He sends His living Word back to reconnect with us, just as He did in the first century, in the humanity of Rabbi Yeshua. He came again, to institute God’s New Covenant with Abraham’s very religious descendants.

The Menu is not the Real Feast

We’ve noted that in the days of Abraham and the other fathers of The Faith, there was no Bible, no written Word of God, for them to study and try to interpret. The only Word they knew was God’s living Word – the one before whom they felt compelled to fall on their faces…the one that electrified them. And in their day there was no ‘Jewish nation’ and no Judaism, or temple or synagogues. Christianity and other organized, man-controlled  ‘World Religions’ did not yet exist. There was only God’s living Word. But for Adam, Eve, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and the others, He was more than enough!

Centuries after Abraham entered eternity, God added the written Word of Scripture and all those other created entities that we just mentioned, emerged. But those created things will never serve as substitutes for God’s living Word! Even the organized religious activities and teachings of those that worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph are no true substitute. They may or may not serve to connect us to the living Word of God, but in themselves, they will never be adequate substitutes for Him. Those created things have the same purpose that pictures and word descriptions in dinner menus are meant to serve. The menu is not the preeminent feature or main attraction of an eating establishment. Menus don’t draw attention to themselves! They draw attention to the real food and drink that await the people in the kitchen. And that’s similar to what the created menu of Scripture is meant to do – direct all attention to the real…living Feast…God’s living creative Word, the Word that became flesh… Messiah Yeshua… the resurrected Lord of Glory!

If we use this menu properly, we will turn to our living God and He will personally speak His electrifying, Life-giving Word into us. And His living Word will fill us with His Holy Spirit. And it will be from God’s living interactive presence that we will begin to eat and drink and do what we do with Almighty God Himself. Only the living God can transmit His life and love-nature and wisdom, righteousness, strength, guidance and health into us. And without Him, we’re dead!

So the written ‘menu’ God provided for Israel and the rest of the world, always points us to the living presence of God’s Son, the risen Messiah. Scripture chronicles His various appearances and manifestations to believing Jewish and non-Jewish men and women throughout the past. And it warns of His ultimate final appearance that is going to take place in the last days. Everything must always point to and highlight the living, creative, electrifying Word of God…the same one Abraham knew so intimately… in the  very beginning.

Over the centuries, Abraham’s descendants kept turning away from God’s living Word. They kept settling for ‘the menu’ instead. So the relationship Nicodemas had with God was inherited. It was a man-made academic study routine with rituals, traditions and formalism. Instead of enjoying Abraham’s organic, living, interaction with God, most of first century Israel was trying to derive life from a man-made organized ‘thing’. They did not know what God’s living Word had been to their forefathers. They had the menu…but most were not actually partaking of the real Feast. That’s why Nicodemas struggled to fathom what God’s living Word was telling Him in chapter 3 of John’s Gospel:

“…Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.’

“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered…‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will, in Him, have eternal Life! (Jn. 3:5-15 Emphasis added.)

Nicodemas knew Yeshua was special…but he had no idea how infinitely special He really was, and is. As they conversed, Yeshua referred to Moses and how he had lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness. He told Nicodemas that He too would personally have to be lifted up in a similar way – ‘in the wilderness’. But what did the wilderness have to do with anything? Nicodemas had no clue. Neither do most of the rest of us because we get so tangled up with ourselves and with created things of this world and with other people that are just like us. We wallow in the soulish, self-serving, sensual concerns of this world. We allow the world, the flesh and the devil to hijack and captivate our senses, appetites, fears and desires. And they blind and deafen us to Abraham’s Portal and to the still, small voice of the living God. 

The Boot Camp in the Wilderness

So the wilderness is the necessary site in which God trains and prepares His Word’s disciples. We have to experience its awesome silence and solitude; otherwise we remain spiritually dense, scattered and clueless. God won’t take us there to punish or torture us. He does it to train and discipline His sons and daughters to full maturity so we can transform into His true image and likeness (Heb. 12). The wilderness is where He reveals His living Word to us. And if we progress in knowing Him, His presence, nature, character and disposition begin to appear and take over and operate in us. And when that happens, God can finally reveal His living Word to the rest of the world – through us! Here are some examples of how He used the wilderness to reveal Himself to people in the past:

• God’s Word drew Abram out of his native pagan civilization and into a nomadic wilderness to teach and discipline and train him (Gen. 12). He also did it with Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and all other true disciples.
• He came after Hagar when she ran into the wilderness with absolutely no hope of survival or a future…and He showed His love for her by blessing her with both (Gen. 21).
• He trained, taught and commissioned Moses and Aaron in the wilderness (Exodus).
• He led His chosen people out of Egypt and into the wilderness Ex. 13).
• He saved puny Israel from the Pharaoh’s mighty army in the wilderness Ex. 13-14).
• He appeared to all of Israel and gave them the Torah and made a Blood Covenant with them in the wilderness (Ex. 20).
• He began to live amid His Covenant people in the wilderness (Num. 2.)
• Scapegoats, bearing the sins of the people, had to be led out into the wilderness (Lev. 16) to prefigure the eternal Lamb of God who was sent out there too.
• Unbelieving Israel had to wander in the wilderness for forty years and that is where they perished as an example to the world (Lev. 26:14-45; Heb. 4).
• God comforted, restored and encouraged Elijah in the wilderness. (1 Kgs. 19)
• In King Jehoshaphat’s day, God saved Israel from overwhelming numbers of enemy forces…in the wilderness 2 Chron. 20).
• The Son of Man was trained and tested in the wilderness before He started His public life (Mt. 4:1-11)
• When the time came to announce the New Covenant era, John the Immerser was trained by the Holy Spirit to live in the wilderness. And he identified himself by what Isaiah had said centuries before:

“A voice is calling: ‘Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness! Make smooth in the desert, a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; and let the rough ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; THEN the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isa. 40:3-5 Emphases added.)

Another Name for ‘Wilderness’ Is – ‘The Cross’

One reason the wilderness is important for our training is that it is, ‘wild’. No man can ‘tame’ or control’ it. It is, ‘no man’s land’. It lies beyond the borders and property lines and cultural limits of all human ability. It crucifies our nationality, ethnicity, racial color, religion, status, philosophies and theologies. As long as we remain rooted in our highly structured ego-adoring human civilizations, our arrogant subjective, selfish viewpoints, opinions, aspirations, goals, interests and agendas completely dominate and prevail even as God and His Kingdom remain distant and unimportant. God’s voice is perpetually drowned out by the endless glitz, glitter and din of our self-seeking desires, schemes, priorities and agendas. That’s why most people remain disconnected from God’s living Word and Holy Spirit.

But in the wilderness…everything is reversed! There, the world system and our subjective personal empires don’t even exist! And God’s awesome Majesty and overwhelming Presence become utterly, blatantly, real and preeminent. In that silent solitude, God’s voice pierces and travels right through us and we hear it clearly and we understand what it is saying. The wilderness crucifies our fallen flesh so that it can no longer dominate, control, interrupt or take the lead in any way. And because the wilderness is ‘no man’s land’…God can give of Himself freely, to everyone – with no discrimination, advantages, privileges, or favoritism. The wilderness is the great ‘equalizer’.

It also becomes a backdrop that lights up and displays the full magnitude, and infinite authority and glorious preeminence of God’s living Word. He finally gets our full attention. He pierces and penetrates our innermost being with His Truth, Light, and living Reality. And suddenly the Portal that leads to eternity becomes visible to us. And as we look through and past it …we can see the beginning of what lies beyond – the enormous, mind-boggling dimensions of the infinite, eternal Kingdom that beckons to us from the other side. For the first time, we get in touch with the eternal birthright, inheritance and status God has waiting for His Covenant friends that will allow His living Word to forge them into His image and likeness.

And finally we realize what truly matters…and what does not. We see that there’s much more to life than the glitzy, temporary satanic deceptions and delusions that the flaky decapitated world always falls for. We see right through the destructive insanity that comes from the idolatry that decapitated people of this world adore. And it’s easy to submit to the Truth and allow our awesome Creator to ‘impregnate’ us with His Life and Love and Righteousness.

Seeing the Truth leaves us no other choice but to submit and transform into ‘electrified’ sons and daughters of God! We’re ready to cooperate with our Master and receive the infinite Blessing He was sent to be to us. His Covenant Love begins to flow into us and our circumstances. And not only are we blessed to overflowing, but we become a blessing to others as our overflow enters their lives as well. Through us…just as God promised Abraham…He begins to bless all the families of the earth.

God’s Word has been trying to reveal this since long before Abraham’s day! But because most people pay no attention, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews gives this stern warning:

“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on Earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘YET ONCE MORE I WILL SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE HEAVEN.’ This expression, ‘Yet once more,’ denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a Consuming Fire!”

Amid the pomp and glitter of human civilization, the powers of Darkness bombard Head-less people with organized, man-controlled religions and systems and ornate temples manned by professional religious go-betweens. Unless we’re very careful…those things can become a wall that actually separates us from the real God, the living God. The pre-packaged intellectualized things about God that come at us from all sides and which we harbor in our own imaginations can easily begin to substitute themselves in our minds and hearts…for the real God Himself. But we dare not confuse those man-made offerings that are encased in little intellectual theological ‘boxes’ for the real infinite and incomprehensible Feast! Those man-made things come at us from the outside and try to work their way in. But that is not how God’s living Word and Holy Spirit operate. God works on us from the inside and works His way out! And He needs no help, advice or translation or explanatory assistance from any of His creatures!

Earthly, man-made systems can’t survive in ‘no man’s land’. The wilderness crucifies everything that our fallen flesh deems essential. It forces us to come to grips with the real God, and Him alone. We can’t define, predict, control or represent Him. And only He can guide us through the impossibilities and perils that the wilderness presents. So in the wilderness, we don’t study or mentally dissect the real God. It’s just the opposite: His Word and Holy Spirit dissect and open us up; God examines and judges what is really inside of us.

“The woman *said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus *said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth!’” (Jn. 4:19-24 Emphasis added.)

“For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” (Heb. 4:10-13)

If God Isn’t Real, We Will Perish

The wilderness makes it clear that if our God isn’t real and living, we will quickly die. But if we turn to Him, His Reality hits us full force and He has a glorious opportunity to prove that He is our All-Sufficient Reality. And …from the other side of the Portal…He then begins to supply and nurture us:

“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the (decapitated) man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust is the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.

“The (decapitated) heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart; I test the mind, even to give to each man according to his ways, according to the results of his deeds.” (Jer. 17:5-10 Amplification and emphasis added.)

In the wilderness, there is nothing unreal to deceive us. There is only God’s Light, and the Satanic Darkness…and our bare naked self. Only then can we see how real God’s living Word is. Then we see clearly that we are never alone, defenseless or hopeless…as long as we keep depending on Him alone.

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Eph. 1:18-23)

This is what God revealed to Abraham. He took him and his son Isaac and grandson Jacob and Joseph and Moses…to the uttermost edge of human endurance, capability and hope…to show them and the rest of us that we are all made of nothing but dust. He did it to crucify our arrogant radical independence from Him and stop us dead in our tracks. He did it to join us to Himself so that He could truly become and remain…Our God:

God sent His Word to take on our nature and flesh so that He could legally represent the human race as Redeemer, King, Prophet and High Priest. He came as ‘The Seed of Abraham. And immediately after the prophet John immersed Him in the Jordan, Father sent Him into the wilderness blast furnace to be tested (Mt. 4:1-11). Operating as the Son of Man, He too languished in total human need, weakness, bankruptcy and helplessness…to prove to us that if we follow Him and depend on what He depended on when He was out there, Father will meet us there and fulfill our needs and teach us the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven:

“…the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them (the decapitated multitudes) in parables?’ Jesus answered them, ‘To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (Mt. 13:10-17 Emphasis added.)

Now it’s Our Turn

The Lord wants to reveal Heaven’s mysteries to us too…if we submit to His Word’s authority and allow Him to graft us into His Covenant Family, our Master will find a place for us around Abraham’s campfire and then He’ll begin to teach us His Covenant ways.

But the electricity that comes from Him can’t be found two seconds into the past; nor can it be found two seconds into the future. You can only find the ‘Electrifying One’ in the …NOW…in the present…at this very moment!

“When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your Name. Your kingdom come; Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’]” (Mt. 6:5-13 Emphasis added.)

“So I say to you: ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened!” (Lk. 11:9-10 Emphasis added.)

The written Word tells us of past people and events. But those people from the past are important to us for this vital reason:

They learned to hear God’s voice in their immediate present. They interacted with Him in a living way…in their ‘NOW’ moments!

Scripture wants us to learn from them…to do what they did. Don’t slavishly mimic their actions from the past. Connect with our living God in your present moments, just as they did in their present moments. They focused all their attention on God’s living Word in their present. And He is here with us right now, to electrify us too – in our personal, ‘right now moments’. Don’t look for Him two seconds ago…or two seconds from now. Always look for Him NOW! We serve a living God. He’s not the God that was, or that will be. He is the God that IS! So Meet Him NOW…let Him pierce, penetrate and impregnate YOU – NOW!

“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the (the living, ever-present electricity of God’s living) Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it. ” (Deut. 30:11-14. Amplification and emphasis added.)