Donald E Coleman 0:22

All right. Welcome back to Daily Living for Christ. And I just want to jump right in. So we're we're on this kind of detour that I talked about the last time, the detour where we were focusing on the belovedness, but now it's like I want we took a detour into learning about the desert and the wilderness and why the desert and the wilderness becomes important for us in our walk with God. So I'm titling this episode The Desert as God's Transforming Room. I just want you to grab that. So the wilderness or the desert as God's transforming room or the place that God uses to transform us. And in most cases, transformation starts with noticing. I want you to grab a hold of that. Transformation starts with noticing what God is inviting us into, or each of us as individuals into, or it's noticing what God is already doing. Got it? What God is already doing, because we've come to the understanding and we've learned that the hidden river or agape, God agape is always flowing, it's always pursuing, it's always transforming. So as we jump in, we want to learn from what that is. And we're almost at the end of this detour. We got one more episode in the detour, and we're going to jump back on and see in the sacred rhythm that Jesus was on. So the key here is when we understand, we're going to enter a space today that's going to focus on where identity is shaped. The desert is where I believe identity is shaped. Or from another standpoint, the desert is the place where we lose ourselves. And I will put a caveat there. We lose our protective selves or our false selves. We lose the outer garment or the outerness of the self, the person that we created to survive in environments and created to be able to thrive at work and do all those things. The desert is the place where God gets to our true self. The desert is where we are remade and realigned. The desert is where our eyes begin to see again. Our inner ears begin to hear again. And that's what's important. So I'm going to read to you two scriptures, and I'm going to read a little bit because I'm going to Hosea first, because I want to I want to share with you a little bit about Hosea, because most people we may not go in. But my goal for this year, this Kairos year, is to really try to blend in the old and the new for us to see that it's not one or the other, that God is the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, that God is always flowing. And agape was flowing from the beginning and all the way to Revelation. So Hosea, let me read Hosea 2.14, and then I want to break down what transpired in Hosea, and then I'll shape it into what it's going to look like in what we're going to get out of today's episode. So Hosea 2.14 says it this way: it says, Therefore, I am now going to allure her. I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. Verse 15, there I will give her back her vineyards. I will make the valley of Ashar a door of hope. There she will respond, as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of Egypt. I just want that scripture to soak in. Because it's a beautiful picture of Hosea speaking to the Israelites. And here's what transpired in this scripture. Chapter two of Hosea is basically talking about the Israel, I mean, not Israelites, but talking about Israel, how Israel had wandered off again, and in that their punishment for disobeying, and they their relationship with God was fractured. And God is talking about the restoration of Israel. Right? So now God basically is telling Israel, he instructs them with certain things to do. And that's in chapter, I mean, that's in verses one coming on down. But here's the key that I want you to get. If you want, you can read chapter two. But it's here's the key. Despite Israel's consistent going away and kind of becoming spiritually alive in God, and then next thing you know, they're in another season where they're in disobedient and those different things. The Israelites in the Old Testament and the tribe of Israel, it kind of mirrors our walk. It mirrors the walk of a believer at times where we're on fire with God, and then next thing you know, we're we're caught up in the idols of chasing career, chasing stuff and striving and all those different things.

unknown 7:05

I didn't get that.

Donald E Coleman 7:06

But what God is saying here that's so powerful is despite all that is going on in Israel's life, in Israel as a nation, God expresses the desire to allure Israel back, or watch this now, to draw Israel back, promising to restore her. And I love that he he addressed Israel from a feminine perspective, drawing her back to restore her vineyards. So when you see vineyards and you think about vineyards in the New Testament, right? The vine, it's that symbol of life. It's the symbol that what comes out of the vineyards, the grapes that came out of the vineyards was used for wine, and the wine was used for communion and community and bringing things together. It's the essence of life that shows up when you see vineyards. But what God was saying is, is agape was promising to restore her vineyards and to transfer her, transform her, desolation, her desolation or her current situation, the dryness, right? Being away into hope. And I want you to get this, man. I want you to truly understand this. And he talks about a new covenant will be established, a new covenant. And it will be established, emphasizing love, righteousness, and faithfulness. Want you to see that. So he drew Israel into the wilderness away from all the noise, away from all the other stuff, all the other things that was going on, away from the false gods and the idols and the other cultures that they were around to get their full attention. Now, Matthew 4 or Luke, Matthew 4 tells us that about Jesus, 4 and 1. It says, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Want you to see that. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, is leading Jesus into the wilderness. And I believe it's in Luke. Luke tells us kind of the same thing. Luke 4 and 1 says, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan, which was the river, and was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil. And we've gone over this scripture multiple times, but I want you to grab a hold of the understanding, the leading agape is flowing, is leading to this place where it can get our attention. And now when you think about the desert, I want to correlate the desert now with the inner room. The Telame. Remember when Jesus said, When you pray, go into your house, close the door, and go into your room and pray. So I want you to think of the desert from a non-physical place as being that inner room, that place where God goes in and He can really go in and touch the interness of who we are. Our interior life is what transpires in the desert. But yet, physical things can be manifested, but God is using the physical realm to reveal to us what's happening in our spiritual life. So the desert is silence. The desert is a place for silence, it's a place for solitude. It's also a place of stripping. It's a place of actually letting go. God like saying, hey, this is maybe this is not healthy for you. I want this to go away. You may not understand that because if we're not in communion, we think of the desert or situations that have come up, we think of it as being an attack. But if we're in communion with God consistently in daily communion, we will know when God is trying to draw our attention, gain our attention so that He can remove or provide us with an invitation to let go. So again, the desert is silence, it's stripping, it's also revealing. A lot of times when we are in the desert, when we're in those quiet seasons, it's time that Gods pulls up the spiritual mirror and allows us to look into the mirror. And the question is do we like what we see? Or does God like what he sees in the reflection? And the desert is also a place of healing. And if we're listening, it's also a place of rest. And the desert in a wilderness is a place of clarifying, it's about alignment. Realignment is what it's about being in the desert, and it's about being remade, or like the prodigal son, son, coming back to our awareness. Because you see, in the wilderness, God removes the false identities that shaped us by Egypt. And we already talked about if you don't go back to the first episode, and it's what Egypt is, but in the in in the wilderness, God removes very so gently, and he doesn't do it by force, God always operates by invitation. And there are things that you might not notice, but they're an invitation to let go. And I believe that's kind of a core message in this episode here for us. Where do you see God inviting you to let go? It might be letting go of a role, of a belief, of a mindset. What is God asking you? In that wilderness season, what is God asking you to let go in order that He can fill that letting go? Because the key about the wilderness, in the wilderness, after the removal of the false identities and after the healing and those different things, we our soul is restored to belovedness, our awareness of belovedness becomes clearer when we're in the wilderness or desert seasons. If we embrace the season, but if we go into the desert season and we constantly keep flowing in the same rhythm that we did before, or the old rhythm, you're not going to see the benefit of what is transpiring in the wilderness, or you're not going to identify what I will say is that sacred rhythm. You won't see it because you're busy. That's why the desert represents stillness and solitude because there's not a lot going on when you're out in the desert. So when we think about the desert, I want us to really understand that Jesus' desert is our model. As believers, Jesus' desert is our model. The word is always our model. And here's the thing: before ministry, before calling, before commissioning, Jesus entered silence. We have to get this back in alignment. Too many of us are out trying to do before we are in presence or communion. Communion comes before commissioning. Jesus was in silence. And here's another thing: identity was clarified. Before ministry, Jesus knew. What did God say? This is my beloved son in who I am pleased. So identity was clarified, it was solidified. And another thing is that the saboteurs were confronted and the mission was purified. The beloved becomes whole in solitude. Why do you think so many, so many of us run from solitude? Run from silence. Because our protective self knows that if we go into silence and we go into solitude with God, over time it loses its power, its strength is loosened. Because, see, in silence, it's no longer an adversarial relationship. And this is what I'm I'm really starting to hammer home on this one because it's important. Spiritual growth accentuates or what is it? What's the word I'm looking for? Spiritual growth magnifies when we acknowledge things not through an adversary or relationship, but when we allow things to be present as we are present with God. God is never an adversary with us, He's always working with us through a spirit of love. And that's how the relationship is supposed to be as we are being transformed. There's a saying, right? If you think about a cat, right? The saying is, is never back a cat into a corner. Because what is the cat going to do? Cat's going to come out scratching and just clawing at you because it has no other place to go. So as we go after trying to work on our flesh, which we're not supposed to try to work on our flesh, that's the Holy Spirit's job. But as we start to notice the saboteurs and the protective self in operation, we're not to go against that. We're not to fight against that because that is part of who we are. And God is saying, yes, your protective self was there for you during a season when you needed it. But you have given it too much power now. You know, you don't need your protective self to lead you now. Now, what you need is your spirit, man, your true self to be able to lead us. So let me say this again: Jesus' desert as our model is our model because before ministry, Jesus entered silence. And I want you to get that. Belovedness becomes whole. Our belovedness in God becomes whole in solitude. Because the false self cannot survive in the wilderness. I just want you to get this. The false self, our protective self, the flesh, the old man cannot survive in the wilderness or in solitude. This is what I want you to get. This is why we resist the wilderness. The sabotaurs lose their voice in the presence of stillness. This is profound. The desert becomes the place of resurrection. And this is not a one-time thing. God will constantly keep drawing us to the desert if He knows that that's the place where the old man in the flesh loses power. Because eventually what will transpire out of that is we begin to see and notice what God is doing. Because the desire is for what? For us to be led by the Spirit of God. Right? And it's important for us as we grab a hold of this. Let me just go. I'm going to stay in Matthew 4 for me. I mean, Luke. And I want to talk just a moment here. Not a lot, because I want you to see how the false self. Shows up in Jesus. I mean, how Jesus handles the devil's temptations because the devil came to appease or try to attract the false self, the need, the instinctual needs, safety, safety and security, esteem and affection, power and control. So as you look at the testing here, look at the first testing. Notice now in 4 1, it says that after Jesus, 40 days, Jesus was tempted. So he ate nothing during those days. And at the end of the 40 days, he was hungry. Verse 3. Then it says, and the devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Safety and security. He was hungry. Look, look at the extension of needs, safety and security. But what did Jesus, how did Jesus respond? Jesus answered and said, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone. It is not just the physical food that man needs, man also needs spiritual food or presence with God. And he could answer that because he had spent 40 days in presence, in communion, in solitude, being solidified, being strengthened. Then here, look, the devil didn't go away, but look what happened here. The devil then led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor. It has been given to me, and you can give it to anyone, and I can give it to anyone I want. If you worship me, it will be yours. Power and control. I want you to get it there. Power and control. But look how Jesus answered the temptation of power and control. Jesus responded and said, It is written, Worship the Lord, your God, and serve him only. I want you to see this. Out of 40 days of being strengthened, Jesus is ready. He's flowing here. Why? Because God has already worked on the inside. God is already in him. God has already been with him. He understands that God is there in and in within and around him in all things. Now, last time, look what happens here. So now the desert the devil led him to Jerusalem. And he said to him, Stand at the highest point of the temple. And he says, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will give his angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. What did I say? Safety and security, esteem and affection, power and control. Look what he's trying to hit here again. He's coming right at him. And we've known these three temptations as being lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life. But these same three temptations are manifested in the instinctual needs of all of humanity. So what is that saying? In our lifetime, which if you've lived, you've been tempted in the same manner. And it is in presence that we get the strength to say it is written. And Jesus responded and said, It is said, do not put the Lord your God to test. And when the devil had finished all his temptings, he left. He left Jesus until an opportune time. So what are we saying here in this episode? Short and sweet. Honor the desert. Honor the wilderness season as the place that God is making room that he may fill us. I've said it over and over again that the goal spiritually is for us to remain empty, that God may fill us consistently with what he needs of us. That agape may constantly keep filling us, and that we live out of the overflow of agape in our lives, and then agape starts to flow out to others. So as I get ready to close this up, I have a couple of questions I want to take with you. Want you to listen to. And let me pray. Thank you, Father, again for another opportunity. Father, you are the God of the desert. You meet us in silence and you transform us in stillness and you restore us in your whisper. Continue to make our awareness of your presence within and around us and in others. As we continue to remain empty, that you may fill us. May your agape flow freely within and through us. That all praise, glory, and honor be to you. And thank you, Father, for bringing a deeper awareness that our eyes are seeing our protective self and the false self-saboteurs. We're not addressing them, we're just naming them. We're aware of them as they are losing their power. We love you, Lord. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Hey, we're almost done here on the next episode. We're going to talk about the promise that awaits us in the journey. So I want you to stay strong, stay faithful, and keep living daily for Christ.