July 29, 2025 • 46 mins
Sometimes God puts you in the wilderness not to punish you, but to prepare you. Those "walls" of your wilderness? They're not a prison they're a divine prep school. Moses thought he was just another has-been with a flock, but he was actually about to become Heaven's chosen CEO of the greatest exodus operation in history. LET'S GO!
Join: Brothers In The Word | Facebook
6 pm CST: Wednesday
8 am CST: Saturday
God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
🎧 New episodes drop every Friday | Available on: Spreaker, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio
👉 Like, Subscribe, and Share
Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
Brothers In The Word - Facebook
Brothers In The Word - YouTube
Join: Brothers In The Word | Facebook
6 pm CST: Wednesday
8 am CST: Saturday
God Bless,
Pastor Tim
If this message touched your heart or challenged you in any way, we're asking you to pass it along. Share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. Your willingness to share doesn't just help us it extends God's Kingdom. It plants seeds. It opens doors. It points people back to Christ. That's the real mission. So don't keep it to yourself. Let it travel. Let it matter in someone else's life. Love & Need Ya!!!
🎧 New episodes drop every Friday | Available on: Spreaker, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio
👉 Like, Subscribe, and Share
Pastor TIm: pastortim@kingdomchicago.org
Brothers In The Word - Facebook
Brothers In The Word - YouTube
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Listen, we're gonna be an Exodus chapter three, verse one,
So we're gonna anchor ourselves in that verse. So if
you have your Bible, turn with me to exit Us
chapter three, verse one. This is where we find a man.
This is where we find the old sheep. This is
where we find a former prince. This man has been
(00:24):
reduced to being simply a shepherd. And this is a
man who thought he had life figured out, but he
found himself lost, He found himself alone, he found himself
tending sheep. In fact, not only was he tending sheep,
but he was tending sheep that he didn't even own.
And exit Us chapter three, verse one, marit is from
(00:46):
the English Standard version. And then we're gonna break it down,
and we're gonna see how many walls we can pull
from this one particular verse. Now, Moses was keeping the
flock of his father in law, Jetro, the priest Omdian,
and he led his flock to the west side of
the wilderness and came to war the mountain of God.
So let's pause right there. I've already done the math
(01:09):
for you. But if you were to count the words
in that one verse, you would get to thirty six words.
Thirty six words to describe forty years of this man's life.
Thirty six words encapsulates Moses' life and exit us chapter three,
(01:29):
Verse one. I want you to think about that, a
life that began in the palace, a man who was
trained in all the wisdom of Egypt. Over in Acts
chapter seven, there's a man by the name of Stephen,
and he's given a testimony before the Sanhedrin Council. And
Stephen is walking through the history of Israel. You cannot
(01:52):
talk about the history of Israel without talking about Moses.
And so Steven gives us some revelation. Over in axt
chapter seven, very good a chance going to read it.
Stephen tells us that Moses was trained in all the
wisdom of Egypt. Stephen says that Moses was mighty. Get
this in words and deeds. Now, if you're familiar with
(02:15):
the story Moses, that might come as a shock to you,
because you know the story. Later, when God calls him,
what is one of the things that Moses tells God,
he says, I can't talk. He says, I have a
stuttering problem. And we're going to unpack that. But nevertheless,
Stephen says that he was a man who was mighty
in words and deeds. So this was a man who
(02:37):
had a life that was destined for greatness. This was
a man who lived a life that was destined for liberation,
for leading a nation. And yet in Exodus chapter three,
Verse one, his life has been reduced to thirty six words.
Thirty six words describing forty years of obscurity in the
(02:59):
will this for forty years? Think about it for fourteen thousand,
six hundred days, day in, day out, the same sand,
the same sun, the same moon, the same sheep. Imagine
his state of mind. Imagine the regret that he's living
(03:20):
with for those fourteen thousand, six hundred days. Imagine the
feeling of being forgotten. Imagine the feeling of being irrelevant.
Imagine the feeling of being stuck. Have you ever been there?
So when we meet him in Exodus chapter three, verse one,
Moses is eighty years old. He's eighty years old, and
(03:41):
he has the first gig job. Ever, so the question
that we have to ask ourselves is what happened? Because
he has spent forty years in the wilderness because of
a single impulsive decision that he made. And this decision
(04:02):
was rooted in self reliance, not God reliance. So in
order for us to understand why he's in the situation
and Exodus chapter three, verse one, we gotta go back
to exit Us chapter two, verse twelve. Exodus chapter two,
verse twelve is the portal to the wilderness for Moses.
(04:25):
We're gonna see something that he did because it helps
us to understand how he got here. And I think
it'll also helped some of us to understand some of
the wilderness situations that we defined ourselves. And I think
there's something in this that we can even learn. And
exit Us chapter two, verse twelve, the Bible says this
about Moses. He looked this way and that way, and
(04:49):
seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid
him in the sand. He looked left, he looked right,
he didn't see anyone. He felt that the coast was clear,
and he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in
(05:13):
the sand. Wow. So what you're looking at in Exodus
chapter two, verse twelve, you're looking at a murder. That's
what you're looking at. He looked this way in that way.
So what he did was Moses surveyed the situation, and
he surveyed the situation based on his own limited perspective.
(05:34):
If you notice, what doesn't it say? It doesn't say
if Moses ever looked up, He didn't consult with God.
God is the one who put the desire for liberation
in Moses. Remember what I just mentioned about Acts chapter seven.
If you're going to read Acts chapter seven, Stephen lets
(05:55):
us know Moses knew he was called. So I don't
want you to think when God called him in Exodus
chapter three, verse two, No, he knew he was called,
but he got ahead of God. Have you ever gotten
ahead of God? So he saw a problem. He saw
an Egyptian attacking one of his Hebrew brothers. He assessed
(06:20):
this problem, and with human eyes and with human solutions,
he murders a man, and he covers it up. He
tried to bury his problem in the sand. I believe
any forensic scientists will tell you cannot bury evidence in sand.
(06:40):
But think about how many of us have tried to
bury our mistakes. How many of us have tried to
bury our sins? How many have tried to bury our
failures in the proverbial sand. We think, if we just
hide it, we think if we just ignore it. We think,
if we just pretend that it didn't happen, then it'll
go away. But you know something interesting about the wilderness.
(07:05):
The wilderness has a way of exposing everything you try
to bury. It strips away pretense, and it leaves you bear.
It leaves you open, It leaves you vulnerable. Moses made
a decision to look this way in that way. He
never looked up, he never looked to God, he never prayed,
(07:28):
he never communicated with God, and that one decision cost
him forty years of delay, forty years of isolation, forty
years of wilderness wandering before the appointed time. And if
we're honest, sometimes we end up in our own personalized
(07:49):
wilderness situations precisely because we don't consult with God, we
don't pray about it, We don't look to the heels.
We look to our feelings, We look to our emotions,
We lean on our own understanding. We make impulsive decisions
(08:10):
based on fear, we make impulsive decisions based on anger,
based on our pride. And so what happens is we'll
find ourselves miles away from where God intended for us
to be, and we're surrounded by walls that we built ourselves,
and what kind of walls are we talking about? All? Baby,
(08:30):
These walls come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you're
in the job wilderness, stuck in a dead end career,
working somewhere where you don't feel fulfilled, wondering if this
is all there is, This job is beneath the degree
that you have you know more than your boss, I
(08:51):
get it. Maybe you're in a marriage wilderness, feeling distant,
feeling disconnected, feeling like you're living with a stranger. Maybe
you're in a single wilderness longing for a companionship, feeling overlooked,
wondering if your time will ever come, or how about
a divorced wilderness. Now you have to navigate the wreckage,
(09:18):
picking up the pieces, feeling like a failure. Maybe you're
in a finance wilderness, drowning in debt, living paycheck to paycheck,
feeling the crushing weight of lack. Can never get ahead,
always behind, always pulling money from here to cover this,
and it's just frustrating, and you go to sleep worrying
(09:40):
about finances, and you wake up worrying about finances. Maybe
you're in a children wilderness, struggling to connect with your
own child or your own children. You're worried, sick, feeling
like maybe you failed as a parent. That's a wilderness.
What about the health of wilderness. Some of us find
ourselves dealing with some health challenges, battling physical illments, wrestling
(10:04):
with mental and emotional stress, feeling broken and weary. Maybe
you're in the ministry wilderness. That's a strange one. Huh.
You're in the wilderness. You're just going through the motions
year after year with no real purpose whatsoever. These are
the walls, These are the wildernesses. And so what I
(10:26):
want to do is I want to walk through Exodus
chapter three, verse one. I want to walk through it
phrase by phrase, and I want us to identify some
of these walls. Because the thing that I love about
God is this God meets us not just on the mountaintop,
but God will also meet us in the valley. God
will meet us in the desert, right up against these
walls about wilderness. So, if you're taking notes, I want
(10:48):
you to write this down Wall number one, the wall
of obscurity. Will give you a moment to write that
down Wall number one, the wall of obscurity. I want
you to look at the first part of Exit Us
chapter three, verse one. We're going to chop this verse
up Exodus chapter three, verse one. Now Moses was keeping
(11:09):
the flock of his father in law, jet Throw, the
priest of Midia. Stop right there. This is the wall
of obscurity. Forty years. Say it with me. Forty years
Moses went from the palace to the pastor. Moses went
from leading armies to leading sheep. Moses went from being
(11:32):
mighty in words and deeds to talking to sheep. He's obscure,
he's hidden away. He's forgotten by Egypt, probably forgotten by
his own people, and maybe he even felt forgotten by God.
The text does something I think it's pretty unique. The
(11:53):
text specifically mentions jet Throw his father in law, and
that jet Throw was a priest of Midian. So this
is in some little random detail that the Holy Spirit
has given us. But what it does is this, It
highlights Moses' complete integration into foreign culture. He's far removed
(12:19):
from his Israelite identity and the promises of God to
his people, and it underscores just how far off track
Moses had gone, not just geographically but also spiritually. Because
this man, Moses, who was called by God is now
living under the authority of a pagan priest. And it's
(12:41):
a reminder that sometimes our wilderness isn't just a place
of waiting, but a place of where we have settled
for less than God's best. We can even find comfort
and compromise company. How many of us are behind the
wall of obscurity right now. Maybe you messed up, maybe
(13:05):
life knock you down, and now you're just trying to
blend in. Now you're just hoping that nobody notices you,
notices you, hoping you can just get by. You had dreams,
you have potential. But the wilderness has a way of
making you feel invisible. The wilderness has a way of
making you feel insignificant. You're keeping someone else's flock, You're
(13:31):
living someone else's life. You're far away from the promise
and purpose that God designed for you. It's interesting how
we can get comfortable in the shadows of our wilderness
to the point that we forget the calling that God
(13:54):
has called us with. Paul told Timothy over and over
in the first epissel of Timothy. He said that God
called us with a holy calling, not according to our purpose,
but according to his grace, according to His mercy that
was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
Sometimes your greatest emotion is God's greatest setup for your promotion.
(14:19):
But here's what I need you to do. Family. You
gotta survive obscurity first. You have to get through that
first phase of the wilderness, the wilderness of the wall
of obscurity. You gotta get past that. Let's get a
supporting scripture in here while we can. It's found over
in Psalms one, p. Thirty nine Versus seventy ten, reads
(14:44):
like this, Where shall I go from your spirit? Or
where shall I flee from your presence? If I send
to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed and shield,
you're there. If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the utmost to see even there, your
hands shall leave me, and your right hand shall hold me,
(15:08):
even in the most obscure, hidden for godden places, the
wilderness of meitty the depths of our despair. What the
Psalmist is saying unequivocally is that God is there. You
can't outrun the presence of God, even when you're trying
(15:29):
to hide from your past, even when you're trying to
hide from your mistakes. Even when you're trying to hide
from the things that you're hidden in the sand, God's
presence in your obscurity is proof that your story it's
not over. It's not over. It's just a chapter that
(15:50):
you didn't plan for. So I got a question for you.
What wall of obscurity are you hiding behind right now?
I want you to think about that. I want you
to write that in your notebook, and later I want
you to come back and answer it. What wall of
obscurity are you hiding behind right now? Because please understand,
(16:15):
Moses didn't stay put. He made a move, even within
the confines of his wilderness. Let's keep going. Wall number two,
the wall of drifting. I want you to look at
the next phrase of this verse is finding Exodus chapter three,
verse one B. Exodus chapter three, Verse one B. And
(16:37):
he Moses led his flock to the west side of
the wilderness. This is the wall of drifting. Taking notes
Wall number two, the wall of drifting. So he's still
in the wilderness, but he's moving. He's leading the flock.
(17:01):
But this is the thing that's so powerful, powerful to me.
But he's not leading them out, He's just moving them
within the wilderness. He's moving from one side to another side.
So what we see is movement with our progress. It's
(17:22):
activity with our purpose, it's motion with our momentum towards
the promise. The proverbial quote unquote west side is significant
because the wilderness of Midian was huge, it was vast.
So leading the flow to the west side suggests that
(17:42):
Moses is moving further away from the populated areas, further
into the desolate, further into the uninhabited regions. It speaks
to a deepening isolation of movement towards the known and
potentially more dangerous parts of the wilderness. Sometimes, even when
(18:07):
we're active in our wilderness, our activity is taking us
further away from the breakthrough. Our activity is taking us
deeper into the desolation. Our activity is taking us deeper
into depression. How many of us are just drifting in
(18:29):
our wilderness, no aim, no goal, no purpose. You're busy,
you're moving, you're doing stuff, but it's not leading you
anywhere meaningful. Think about it. You're just shuffling cheap from
one side of your problems to the other side of
(18:50):
you of your problems. You're in motion, but you're not
making any progress. You're doing things, but you're not making
any progress. You're managing your wilderness instead of trying to
escape it. Moses is settled, he's content. He's managing this wilding.
He's been here for forty years. And so you will
(19:13):
find yourself just drifting hoping something will change, but without
any intentional direction towards God's purpose. Are you so busy
right now managing the mundane in your life that you're
missing the miraculous that God wants to do with you.
(19:39):
If you're taking those rectors down movement without God's direction,
it's just expensive exercise in the wilderness. That's all it is.
You're moving, but God is not directing you, and that's
(20:00):
going to cost you to just keep moving in your wilderness.
This is gonna supporting scripture in here is founding Proverbs,
chapter three, verse five and six. This is a verse
of scripture that you should know. And if you don't,
I want to challenge you to learn these two verses.
Proverbs chapter three, verse five and six. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart, Lean not to your own
(20:23):
understanding in all of your ways. Do what acknowledge Him?
And what will he do? And God will make straight
your paths. When you lean on your own understanding, you
know what you end up doing. You end up looking
this way in that way, and drifting aimlessly. But when
(20:49):
you acknowledge God, when you put Him first in all
of your ways, even in the wilderness, God promises to
make your pass right. God can give you direction in desolation,
your wilderness, drifting ins the moment you surrender your map
(21:12):
to the master architect, question are you drifting aimlessly? Or
are you seeking God's direction in your wilderness? If you
acknowledge that you're in a wilderness, here's a question. Are
you in this wilderness just drifting or are you in
(21:35):
this wilderness seeking God's direction. Let's go to the next wall,
Wall number three. Wall number three is the wall of
divine encounter. And I need us all to move and
get to this wall. We got to get past the obscurity,
we got to get past the drifting, and now we
(21:57):
arrive at wall number three, Wall number three, Wall of
divine encounter. I want you to notice the last phrase
of this very powerful verse Exodus chapter three, verse one
in c and came to Horreb, the mountain of God.
This is the wall of divine encounter. And this is
(22:18):
what's so powerful to me about this. Moses was not
looking for this. Moses was just leading sheep. He was
just doing his job. He was stuck in his routine.
He was drifting in his wilderness. But somehow, in the
midst of his mundane in the middle of his drifting,
he ended up at Horreb, the mountain of God, the
(22:42):
place where God shows up, the place where destiny is reignited,
the place where the burning bush wasn't consumed. Horror is
also known as Mount Sinai. I hope you heard of
that mountain before, because Mount Sinai is the place where
God is going to later give Moses the Law. So
(23:04):
Moses didn't stumble upon a random heel. He was led
unknowingly to a place that is saturated with divine significance,
a place where God has revealed himself and would do
so again and again to Moses. So it wasn't moses
navigational skills that got him there. It was God's sovereign leading,
(23:28):
even using the mundane task of shepherdy to position Moses
for destiny. I need you to understand something. Your wilderness
isn't just a holding pattern. Your wilderness is holy ground.
If God decides to meet you there, I get it.
You might feel stuck, you might feel forgotten, you might
(23:50):
feel frustrated, you might feel like you're just drifting through
life right now. But I came to tell somebody that
your wilderness has an address, Your wilderness has an expiration date,
and God knows exactly where you are. He can take
your mundane routine, your directionalists drifting, and he can lead
(24:11):
you right to the wall of divine encounter, right to
the place where He shows up, where he speaks, where
he reminds you of who you are and who you
are and why he called you in the first place.
So hear me. Your wilderness is not your end. It's
the unexpected pathway to the mountain of God. God has
(24:34):
something that he needs to say to you. So whatever
you do, don't despise your wilderness journey. Just about every
person that was called in this Bible, they had a
wilderness moment. They had a moment where they had to
be alone with God. And that might be the only
(24:54):
road that leads to horror. God doesn't always get you
out of the w wlderness. Can I tell you something
In the Gospel of Mark, after Jesus is baptized. After
the heaven, God speaks. From heaven, the Holy Spirit is
descending in the form of a dove. In the form
of a dove, God speaks, and he says, this is
(25:15):
my beloved son, and who I am well pleased? Do
you know in the Gospel of Mark? You only find
it in the Gospel of Mark. The Bible says that
the Spirit pulled up, putting Jesus in the car, drove
him to the wilderness, and dropped him off, and he
was alone there in the wilderness for forty forty is
the number of testing. Forty days without anything to eat
or anything to drink. Mar's Gospel says he was there
(25:38):
with the wild beast, and guess who came to tempt him? Say,
some of our wilderness moments are ordained by God. I
know that doesn't fit our theology, but there's something that
God is trying to strip off of You see, in
the wilderness. There's no room for pride in the wilderness.
(26:02):
There's no place for ego in the wilderness. And if
God is going to elevate you to where he's calling
you to, there are some things that God is going
to have to strip off of you. There are some
things that God is going to have to deal with. See,
Moses was skilled in all of the Egyptian ways. God
didn't need Moses to be skilled in all of the
(26:24):
Egyptian wisdom and ways. He needed to have time with
Moses because Moses was going to deliver his people, not
the Egyptians. Let's get a scripture for this. Isaiah, chapter
forty three, verse nineteen. Isaiah Chapter forty three, verse nineteen.
I want you to hear the words of the Lord
speaking to Israel. God says, behold, I am doing a
(26:45):
new thing now the spring sport. Do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers
in the desert. So what does that verse say. It's
saying to us that God specializes in the impossible. He
(27:07):
makes ways where there are no ways. He brings life
to desolate places. He can take your dry, dusty, directionless wilderness,
and he can turn it into a place where new
things spring forth, where rivers flow, and where He reveals
himself in very, very powerful ways. Your wilderness is not
(27:30):
a sign that God has abandoned you, but it is
an invitation for you to witness his creative power and
impossible circumstances. So I got a question for you. Are
you expecting God to meet you in your wilderness or
(27:53):
have you given up and you just wandering to the
west side of the desert. Listen to me. Moses spent
forty years looking this way and that way, trying to
fix things himself, burying his problems and drifting in the wilderness.
(28:15):
But God and his infinite wisdom and his infinite mercy
and perfect timing, he led that brother to horror. And
it was there at that mountain, in the most unexpected place,
after the longest delay, that God showed up and he
(28:38):
spoke to him. He called him by name, and that
next first And maybe you've been in your wilderness for
forty years, forty months, forty weeks, forty days, forty hours,
forty minutes. Maybe you feel for God, Maybe you feel stuck.
(28:59):
Maybe you feel like your life has no direction and
no purpose. Maybe you try to bury your problems in
the sand and the wilderness exposed now. But I want
you to understand that your wilderness is not your final destination.
Your wilderness, my wilderness, is just a backdrop for God's
(29:20):
next move in your life. Because everything that we've talked
about in the verses that we've read leads me to
one undeniable truth. God sees you. He knows where you are.
He was watching Moses the whole time. God is waiting
(29:42):
to meet you right there in the middle of your mess,
right up against the walls of your wilderness. So I
want to give you three called actions. It's three things
that I need you to do right now. And it's
not just information that I want to give you, but
(30:02):
it's activation. I want you to be activated. Number One,
Acknowledge your wilderness. You're writing notes, write this down. The
first thing you're gonna have to do, Man of God,
woman of God, is this acknowledge your wilderness. We all
(30:23):
have different wilderness experiences, no sense, and you're looking over
at somebody else's. You gotta deal with yours. Stop pretending
that you're fine, Stop pretending that everything is okay, Stop hiding,
stop trying to bury it. Look your wilderness square in
the eye and call it what it is. Is it
(30:47):
a job wilderness? Is it a marriage wilderness? Is it
a divorce wilderness? Is it a single wilderness? Is it
a financial wilderness? Is it a health wilderness? Name it
because hear hear me clearly, you can't conquer what you
don't confront. If you don't confront it, it's not going anywhere.
(31:10):
Turn to your neighbor in the chat and say, I'm
in a wilderness, but I'm not staying here. I'm not
staying here. I have an appointment with destiny, I have
an appointment with purpose. I'm not staying here. Is what
is God speaking to you right now? Your wilderness? Is
it a wilderness of your homemaking or is it a
wilderness that you just woke up to. You may have
(31:33):
just woke up and got word that you lost your job.
You may have woken up and got word that a
loved one has passed away. That's still a wilderness. But
you have to identify your wilderness. You have to confront
your wilderness. You have to take your wilderness to God.
This is why Peter said over in his epistle. And
(31:56):
who better to tell you this than Peter? He said,
Cast all all of your cares upon the Lord. Why
Peter said, because he cares for you. Knuckle ahead, Cast all,
not some of your cares, not only on Sunday, Cast
all of your cares on the Lord. Cast all of
your wilderness on the Lord. Why, because he cares for you. Okay,
(32:17):
it's number one, We got to confront it. Number two.
Stop looking side to side. Stop looking side to side
and look up. Moses looked this way in that way,
and he ended up lost for forty years. Stop relying
(32:41):
on your own strength. Stop relying on your own wisdom.
Stop thinking you have all of the answers to the test,
because you don't. Your solutions have not worked up until
this point. Stop comparing your wilderness to somebody else. Well,
I ain't got it that bad, or such as us. No,
(33:04):
we all have our own personal wilderness that we have
to deal with. Lift your eyes to the heels from
where your health comes from. Your health comes from the Lord.
Look up to God, who makes a way even in
the wilderness. Turns to your neighbor in the chat to say,
(33:25):
my help comes from the Lord. I can't do this,
We can't do this thing called life on our own.
The Bible says, all this in the world is the
lust of the eye of Us, and the flesh and
the pride of life. Those three are waiting on you
to wake up every single month morning. The LUs of
the eye of Us, of the flesh and the pride
of life. What's interesting about mods the situation is this,
(33:47):
it wasn't the devil that got him in this predicament.
He got hisself into this wilderness. Why because he looked
this way and he looked that way, analyzed the situation.
He felt like, Okay, nobody is watching. The coast is clear.
He killed the man and then with all of that
(34:08):
Egyptian wisdom and education and knowledge that he had, he
buried the man in the sand. You ever watched those
murder mystery kind of shows, they would have rapped Moses
of them in the first three minutes. Number three. Prepare
(34:30):
for your horr moment. Prepare for your horror moment. God
is leading you. Even if you feel like you're drifting,
even if life feels like it's drifting, God is leading you.
He is positioning you, even in your obscurity. Don't give up,
(34:51):
don't lose hope. Keep moving forward. Whatever you do, keep
moving forward, trusting that God is leading you to the
place of divine encounter. Get ready for your burning bush moment.
Get ready for the moment when God is going to
speak directly to you. I believe Later in that seventh verse,
(35:13):
he's going to tell Moses in Exodus chapter three. He's
going to say, I've heard the affliction of my people,
and I've come to answer. I've come to answer their cry.
So when God pulls up to Moses, he knows Moses past,
he knows what Moses did. I pray that you will
(35:35):
prepare yourself for your destiny and for your purpose and
your calling to be reignited right in the middle of
your wilderness. Sometimes you have to embrace that wilderness moment.
Sometimes your greatest growth will happen in your wilderness moment.
(35:56):
The thing about the wilderness is that it reveals exactly
who you are. I'm talking about when nobody is around,
no social media, nobody to text, nobody to call, nobody
to tweet, none of that. Just you and God. So
embrace it. But don't stay there. It's not your permanent address.
(36:21):
It's just preparation. It's preparation for where God is taking you.
The Bible says that if you are faithful over a
few things, then God will do what God will make
your ruler over many. So whatever God has placed in
your hands right now, and it's season of your life.
(36:41):
Wherever you are with a job, or without a job,
in a relationship, not in a relationship, struggling in your marriage,
struggling in your finances, struggling in your health. Wherever you are,
whatever wilderness you're dealing with, whatever God is placed in
your hands, be faithful over it. Ever says, do it
unto God and not unto man. And when you think
(37:03):
in that term, it changes your whole perspective. When you
work unto God, it changes your perspective. So I don't
want you to give up. I don't want you to
tap out. I want you to stay connected, stay in,
stay connected. I thought about this lesson for the most
(37:27):
of the most of today, and I want this message
to go out to my people, my people in the
back rope, my people in the front rope, my people
in the chat rope, my people on the overflow, my
people who almost gave up. God is with you in
(37:49):
the wilderness. God hasn't forgotten you. Your story isn't over.
Stop writing your obituary, stop writing your epithet. Your story
is not over. The walls around you are not prison walls,
and I'll start hanging stuff up on these walls. They
may just simply be walls of training ground. The walls
(38:12):
that are preparing you for the promise. So whatever you do,
stay in your word, keep taking notes, keep engaging, because
God is doing a new thing. God is making away.
He's going to lead you out of your wilderness and
into your destiny. Sometimes God will take you through something
(38:35):
so that you can go back and help somebody else.
Come on, somebody just putting a chat. It's not about me.
God needed Moses to be a leader and a deliverer
to over three million people. See, you don't see that.
(38:57):
In Exodus chapter three, verse one. Moses doesn't even see that.
Moses is a superstar in this Bible. He's gonna do
miracles you've never seen anywhere else in the scripture. This
man is going to part the red sea. He has
a staff in his hand when God is speaking to
him in Exodus chapter three, Verse one. Staff is nothing
(39:20):
but a stick, something that this man uses the God.
The sheet to keep the street, the sheet to whoop,
the sheet to lean on. It's just a stick. But
when Moses takes that stick, he lifts it to God.
Now what becomes the rod of God? And God does
miraculous powers and wonders with that stick. You have something
(39:44):
in your possession right now. I promise you that if
you just simply lifted up to God, God would do
some miraculous things with it. You have a past, you
have brokenness, you have tears, You have things that you've experienced,
things that you've survived that God wants to use. We
overcome the devil by the blood of the Lamb, and
(40:05):
by the word of our testimony. God wants to lift
your testimony up. This is only a test. Moses took
that stick. He held it out over the Red Sea,
and the red sea parted, and them people did the
electric slide right across that red sea. And when Pharaoh's
army came up from behind him, he reached it out again.
(40:28):
The warriors came back down, and Pharaoh's army drowned in
that red sea. Do you know scientists have found chariot
tracks at the bottom of that sea. Yeah. So I
wanted to pop out here and share this lesson, share
(40:51):
this teaching with someone to encourage you with where you are.
I want to thank you for joining me tonight in
this Bible sanctuary. I want you, if you haven't done
so already, please follow this page. I believe that somebody
who needs to hear what we've talked about tonight. Later on,
probably next week, we're going to be dropping an audio
(41:13):
link because I want to provide a platform where you
can go and listen to the audio teachings of these walls.
What I realized is that Facebook is not a place
for life podcasts. It's not a place where you can
just go and get information. So I want to create something,
or I want to be a part of something that
will help you to do that. I think sister Abigail
(41:35):
told me how much it was blessing her. I did
send a link last week, but that link was too
hard for some people to work around because it was
a large link, and Google will only scan like the
first twenty five megabytes of a link, and so because
it was so big that a warning will pop up
and tell people that hey, Google didn't scan the whole link.
(41:57):
So therefore you if you try to open it, you
open it edge all risk. So I don't want to
put anybody in that kind of bund So something is
coming that you'll be able to listen to these teachings
just like you listen to any of your other podcasts
that you're currently listening to now. So I'm excited about that.
But again, thank you all for jumping on with me.
(42:20):
I am endeavoring to do more of these. I want
us to really begin to build this family, really begin
to look and see in which ways that we can
help build this community. Even more so, I don't count
this as something that I just do, but I really
(42:44):
count this as purpose that God has called Mefore, because
the wilderness that I was once in the wilderness that
I came out of. That's the reason why this means
so much to me, and that's the reason why I
can speak to this because I've been in that wilderness
place and it got to a place where I began
to embrace my wilderness because that's really where I learned
(43:05):
the word of God. I didn't learn the word of
God in the seminary school. I didn't learn the word
of God at a church. I learned to God. I
learned the Word of God sitting in a in an apartment.
And a few weeks ago I went back down to
Champagne and I actually went and pulled up at that
apartment and I took a picture of it from the outside.
I got it on my phone now. And the reason
(43:26):
why that was important to me is because that apartment
represented my wilderness. It represented a space that I was
in when I was contemplating suicide. And so sitting there
on the outside taking a picture of that apartment, tears
just started running down my face because there were tears
of joy because I was just thanking God that even
(43:49):
though I was in that wilderness place, I didn't stay
in that wilderness place, and a lot came, a lot
of growth came out of that wilderness situation for me.
So that's why this lesson is so near and so
dear to my heart because I've lived it, and that's
why I can talk to you about it. That's why
I can encourage you that there is a process that
(44:11):
God has to take you through. There are some things
that God has to strip off of you if God
is going to use you the way that I know
he can use you. So the thing that I want
to encourage all of you to do is simply this,
Submit to the process. Submit to your wilderness. Just say yes, Lord,
submit to it. Because there's something that God wants to
(44:32):
show you. There's something that God wants to teach you.
God wants to mold you, He wants to shape you,
and he can't do it in the noise and the
chaos and everything that's around you. So sometimes he has
to call you to himself. And that's what he did
for me, and some of you may be going through
that right now. But I promise you don't lose heart.
(44:53):
The Bible says be not weary in well doing, for
in do season we'll read if we don't give up.
So before I get up out of here, I wanted
to thank everybody that pulled up on today, those of
you that are on the Facebook side, I appreciate you, guys.
(45:15):
I appreciate the time that you spent. I'm trying to
get the names right quite I saw some names on here. Oh,
so I want to thank by the Dana, since the Samika,
since the Erica Brother, Bobby Piece, Renee Sins, Jessica Grayson's
(45:36):
are up in the building. Brother Sam by the Dana.
Love you guys so much. We'll be back Saturday. You'll
get me again, how about that? So I'll be back
Saturday bringing another lesson. We're still gonna be talking about
these walls that we're dealing with, and so stay here,
stay connected, whatever you do. I know there are a
(45:57):
lot of you who don't even attend quote unquote, and
I get it. I understand some of the things that
I see in church sometimes really frustrates me as well.
But this is the thing I want to say above
anything else. Whatever you do, don't turn your back on God.
Don't turn your back on God. All churches are not,
you know, filled with foolishness. But don't give up on God. Gay.
(46:24):
Whatever you do, whatever you're going through, whatever challenges you
may face, do not give up on God. And so,
brothers in the Word, we're here. We're not going anywhere.
We're going to follow the Word of God. So if
you follow us, that's what you're going to be following.
You're going to be following the Word of God as well.
All right. So I want to thank you all for
being here on tonight, and I need you to get
into the Word of God, because the Word of God
(46:45):
will get into you and we'll see you next side. Peace.
Listen, we're gonna be an Exodus chapter three, verse one,
So we're gonna anchor ourselves in that verse. So if
you have your Bible, turn with me to exit Us
chapter three, verse one. This is where we find a man.
This is where we find the old sheep. This is
where we find a former prince. This man has been
(00:24):
reduced to being simply a shepherd. And this is a
man who thought he had life figured out, but he
found himself lost, He found himself alone, he found himself
tending sheep. In fact, not only was he tending sheep,
but he was tending sheep that he didn't even own.
And exit Us chapter three, verse one, marit is from
(00:46):
the English Standard version. And then we're gonna break it down,
and we're gonna see how many walls we can pull
from this one particular verse. Now, Moses was keeping the
flock of his father in law, Jetro, the priest Omdian,
and he led his flock to the west side of
the wilderness and came to war the mountain of God.
So let's pause right there. I've already done the math
(01:09):
for you. But if you were to count the words
in that one verse, you would get to thirty six words.
Thirty six words to describe forty years of this man's life.
Thirty six words encapsulates Moses' life and exit us chapter three,
(01:29):
Verse one. I want you to think about that, a
life that began in the palace, a man who was
trained in all the wisdom of Egypt. Over in Acts
chapter seven, there's a man by the name of Stephen,
and he's given a testimony before the Sanhedrin Council. And
Stephen is walking through the history of Israel. You cannot
(01:52):
talk about the history of Israel without talking about Moses.
And so Steven gives us some revelation. Over in axt
chapter seven, very good a chance going to read it.
Stephen tells us that Moses was trained in all the
wisdom of Egypt. Stephen says that Moses was mighty. Get
this in words and deeds. Now, if you're familiar with
(02:15):
the story Moses, that might come as a shock to you,
because you know the story. Later, when God calls him,
what is one of the things that Moses tells God,
he says, I can't talk. He says, I have a
stuttering problem. And we're going to unpack that. But nevertheless,
Stephen says that he was a man who was mighty
in words and deeds. So this was a man who
(02:37):
had a life that was destined for greatness. This was
a man who lived a life that was destined for liberation,
for leading a nation. And yet in Exodus chapter three,
Verse one, his life has been reduced to thirty six words.
Thirty six words describing forty years of obscurity in the
(02:59):
will this for forty years? Think about it for fourteen thousand,
six hundred days, day in, day out, the same sand,
the same sun, the same moon, the same sheep. Imagine
his state of mind. Imagine the regret that he's living
(03:20):
with for those fourteen thousand, six hundred days. Imagine the
feeling of being forgotten. Imagine the feeling of being irrelevant.
Imagine the feeling of being stuck. Have you ever been there?
So when we meet him in Exodus chapter three, verse one,
Moses is eighty years old. He's eighty years old, and
(03:41):
he has the first gig job. Ever, so the question
that we have to ask ourselves is what happened? Because
he has spent forty years in the wilderness because of
a single impulsive decision that he made. And this decision
(04:02):
was rooted in self reliance, not God reliance. So in
order for us to understand why he's in the situation
and Exodus chapter three, verse one, we gotta go back
to exit Us chapter two, verse twelve. Exodus chapter two,
verse twelve is the portal to the wilderness for Moses.
(04:25):
We're gonna see something that he did because it helps
us to understand how he got here. And I think
it'll also helped some of us to understand some of
the wilderness situations that we defined ourselves. And I think
there's something in this that we can even learn. And
exit Us chapter two, verse twelve, the Bible says this
about Moses. He looked this way and that way, and
(04:49):
seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid
him in the sand. He looked left, he looked right,
he didn't see anyone. He felt that the coast was clear,
and he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in
(05:13):
the sand. Wow. So what you're looking at in Exodus
chapter two, verse twelve, you're looking at a murder. That's
what you're looking at. He looked this way in that way.
So what he did was Moses surveyed the situation, and
he surveyed the situation based on his own limited perspective.
(05:34):
If you notice, what doesn't it say? It doesn't say
if Moses ever looked up, He didn't consult with God.
God is the one who put the desire for liberation
in Moses. Remember what I just mentioned about Acts chapter seven.
If you're going to read Acts chapter seven, Stephen lets
(05:55):
us know Moses knew he was called. So I don't
want you to think when God called him in Exodus
chapter three, verse two, No, he knew he was called,
but he got ahead of God. Have you ever gotten
ahead of God? So he saw a problem. He saw
an Egyptian attacking one of his Hebrew brothers. He assessed
(06:20):
this problem, and with human eyes and with human solutions,
he murders a man, and he covers it up. He
tried to bury his problem in the sand. I believe
any forensic scientists will tell you cannot bury evidence in sand.
(06:40):
But think about how many of us have tried to
bury our mistakes. How many of us have tried to
bury our sins? How many have tried to bury our
failures in the proverbial sand. We think, if we just
hide it, we think if we just ignore it. We think,
if we just pretend that it didn't happen, then it'll
go away. But you know something interesting about the wilderness.
(07:05):
The wilderness has a way of exposing everything you try
to bury. It strips away pretense, and it leaves you bear.
It leaves you open, It leaves you vulnerable. Moses made
a decision to look this way in that way. He
never looked up, he never looked to God, he never prayed,
(07:28):
he never communicated with God, and that one decision cost
him forty years of delay, forty years of isolation, forty
years of wilderness wandering before the appointed time. And if
we're honest, sometimes we end up in our own personalized
(07:49):
wilderness situations precisely because we don't consult with God, we
don't pray about it, We don't look to the heels.
We look to our feelings, We look to our emotions,
We lean on our own understanding. We make impulsive decisions
(08:10):
based on fear, we make impulsive decisions based on anger,
based on our pride. And so what happens is we'll
find ourselves miles away from where God intended for us
to be, and we're surrounded by walls that we built ourselves,
and what kind of walls are we talking about? All? Baby,
(08:30):
These walls come in all shapes and sizes. Maybe you're
in the job wilderness, stuck in a dead end career,
working somewhere where you don't feel fulfilled, wondering if this
is all there is, This job is beneath the degree
that you have you know more than your boss, I
(08:51):
get it. Maybe you're in a marriage wilderness, feeling distant,
feeling disconnected, feeling like you're living with a stranger. Maybe
you're in a single wilderness longing for a companionship, feeling overlooked,
wondering if your time will ever come, or how about
a divorced wilderness. Now you have to navigate the wreckage,
(09:18):
picking up the pieces, feeling like a failure. Maybe you're
in a finance wilderness, drowning in debt, living paycheck to paycheck,
feeling the crushing weight of lack. Can never get ahead,
always behind, always pulling money from here to cover this,
and it's just frustrating, and you go to sleep worrying
(09:40):
about finances, and you wake up worrying about finances. Maybe
you're in a children wilderness, struggling to connect with your
own child or your own children. You're worried, sick, feeling
like maybe you failed as a parent. That's a wilderness.
What about the health of wilderness. Some of us find
ourselves dealing with some health challenges, battling physical illments, wrestling
(10:04):
with mental and emotional stress, feeling broken and weary. Maybe
you're in the ministry wilderness. That's a strange one. Huh.
You're in the wilderness. You're just going through the motions
year after year with no real purpose whatsoever. These are
the walls, These are the wildernesses. And so what I
(10:26):
want to do is I want to walk through Exodus
chapter three, verse one. I want to walk through it
phrase by phrase, and I want us to identify some
of these walls. Because the thing that I love about
God is this God meets us not just on the mountaintop,
but God will also meet us in the valley. God
will meet us in the desert, right up against these
walls about wilderness. So, if you're taking notes, I want
(10:48):
you to write this down Wall number one, the wall
of obscurity. Will give you a moment to write that
down Wall number one, the wall of obscurity. I want
you to look at the first part of Exit Us
chapter three, verse one. We're going to chop this verse
up Exodus chapter three, verse one. Now Moses was keeping
(11:09):
the flock of his father in law, jet Throw, the
priest of Midia. Stop right there. This is the wall
of obscurity. Forty years. Say it with me. Forty years
Moses went from the palace to the pastor. Moses went
from leading armies to leading sheep. Moses went from being
(11:32):
mighty in words and deeds to talking to sheep. He's obscure,
he's hidden away. He's forgotten by Egypt, probably forgotten by
his own people, and maybe he even felt forgotten by God.
The text does something I think it's pretty unique. The
(11:53):
text specifically mentions jet Throw his father in law, and
that jet Throw was a priest of Midian. So this
is in some little random detail that the Holy Spirit
has given us. But what it does is this, It
highlights Moses' complete integration into foreign culture. He's far removed
(12:19):
from his Israelite identity and the promises of God to
his people, and it underscores just how far off track
Moses had gone, not just geographically but also spiritually. Because
this man, Moses, who was called by God is now
living under the authority of a pagan priest. And it's
(12:41):
a reminder that sometimes our wilderness isn't just a place
of waiting, but a place of where we have settled
for less than God's best. We can even find comfort
and compromise company. How many of us are behind the
wall of obscurity right now. Maybe you messed up, maybe
(13:05):
life knock you down, and now you're just trying to
blend in. Now you're just hoping that nobody notices you,
notices you, hoping you can just get by. You had dreams,
you have potential. But the wilderness has a way of
making you feel invisible. The wilderness has a way of
making you feel insignificant. You're keeping someone else's flock, You're
(13:31):
living someone else's life. You're far away from the promise
and purpose that God designed for you. It's interesting how
we can get comfortable in the shadows of our wilderness
to the point that we forget the calling that God
(13:54):
has called us with. Paul told Timothy over and over
in the first epissel of Timothy. He said that God
called us with a holy calling, not according to our purpose,
but according to his grace, according to His mercy that
was given to us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
Sometimes your greatest emotion is God's greatest setup for your promotion.
(14:19):
But here's what I need you to do. Family. You
gotta survive obscurity first. You have to get through that
first phase of the wilderness, the wilderness of the wall
of obscurity. You gotta get past that. Let's get a
supporting scripture in here while we can. It's found over
in Psalms one, p. Thirty nine Versus seventy ten, reads
(14:44):
like this, Where shall I go from your spirit? Or
where shall I flee from your presence? If I send
to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed and shield,
you're there. If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the utmost to see even there, your
hands shall leave me, and your right hand shall hold me,
(15:08):
even in the most obscure, hidden for godden places, the
wilderness of meitty the depths of our despair. What the
Psalmist is saying unequivocally is that God is there. You
can't outrun the presence of God, even when you're trying
(15:29):
to hide from your past, even when you're trying to
hide from your mistakes. Even when you're trying to hide
from the things that you're hidden in the sand, God's
presence in your obscurity is proof that your story it's
not over. It's not over. It's just a chapter that
(15:50):
you didn't plan for. So I got a question for you.
What wall of obscurity are you hiding behind right now?
I want you to think about that. I want you
to write that in your notebook, and later I want
you to come back and answer it. What wall of
obscurity are you hiding behind right now? Because please understand,
(16:15):
Moses didn't stay put. He made a move, even within
the confines of his wilderness. Let's keep going. Wall number two,
the wall of drifting. I want you to look at
the next phrase of this verse is finding Exodus chapter three,
verse one B. Exodus chapter three, Verse one B. And
(16:37):
he Moses led his flock to the west side of
the wilderness. This is the wall of drifting. Taking notes
Wall number two, the wall of drifting. So he's still
in the wilderness, but he's moving. He's leading the flock.
(17:01):
But this is the thing that's so powerful, powerful to me.
But he's not leading them out, He's just moving them
within the wilderness. He's moving from one side to another side.
So what we see is movement with our progress. It's
(17:22):
activity with our purpose, it's motion with our momentum towards
the promise. The proverbial quote unquote west side is significant
because the wilderness of Midian was huge, it was vast.
So leading the flow to the west side suggests that
(17:42):
Moses is moving further away from the populated areas, further
into the desolate, further into the uninhabited regions. It speaks
to a deepening isolation of movement towards the known and
potentially more dangerous parts of the wilderness. Sometimes, even when
(18:07):
we're active in our wilderness, our activity is taking us
further away from the breakthrough. Our activity is taking us
deeper into the desolation. Our activity is taking us deeper
into depression. How many of us are just drifting in
(18:29):
our wilderness, no aim, no goal, no purpose. You're busy,
you're moving, you're doing stuff, but it's not leading you
anywhere meaningful. Think about it. You're just shuffling cheap from
one side of your problems to the other side of
(18:50):
you of your problems. You're in motion, but you're not
making any progress. You're doing things, but you're not making
any progress. You're managing your wilderness instead of trying to
escape it. Moses is settled, he's content. He's managing this wilding.
He's been here for forty years. And so you will
(19:13):
find yourself just drifting hoping something will change, but without
any intentional direction towards God's purpose. Are you so busy
right now managing the mundane in your life that you're
missing the miraculous that God wants to do with you.
(19:39):
If you're taking those rectors down movement without God's direction,
it's just expensive exercise in the wilderness. That's all it is.
You're moving, but God is not directing you, and that's
(20:00):
going to cost you to just keep moving in your wilderness.
This is gonna supporting scripture in here is founding Proverbs,
chapter three, verse five and six. This is a verse
of scripture that you should know. And if you don't,
I want to challenge you to learn these two verses.
Proverbs chapter three, verse five and six. Trust in the
Lord with all your heart, Lean not to your own
(20:23):
understanding in all of your ways. Do what acknowledge Him?
And what will he do? And God will make straight
your paths. When you lean on your own understanding, you
know what you end up doing. You end up looking
this way in that way, and drifting aimlessly. But when
(20:49):
you acknowledge God, when you put Him first in all
of your ways, even in the wilderness, God promises to
make your pass right. God can give you direction in desolation,
your wilderness, drifting ins the moment you surrender your map
(21:12):
to the master architect, question are you drifting aimlessly? Or
are you seeking God's direction in your wilderness? If you
acknowledge that you're in a wilderness, here's a question. Are
you in this wilderness just drifting or are you in
(21:35):
this wilderness seeking God's direction. Let's go to the next wall,
Wall number three. Wall number three is the wall of
divine encounter. And I need us all to move and
get to this wall. We got to get past the obscurity,
we got to get past the drifting, and now we
(21:57):
arrive at wall number three, Wall number three, Wall of
divine encounter. I want you to notice the last phrase
of this very powerful verse Exodus chapter three, verse one
in c and came to Horreb, the mountain of God.
This is the wall of divine encounter. And this is
(22:18):
what's so powerful to me about this. Moses was not
looking for this. Moses was just leading sheep. He was
just doing his job. He was stuck in his routine.
He was drifting in his wilderness. But somehow, in the
midst of his mundane in the middle of his drifting,
he ended up at Horreb, the mountain of God, the
(22:42):
place where God shows up, the place where destiny is reignited,
the place where the burning bush wasn't consumed. Horror is
also known as Mount Sinai. I hope you heard of
that mountain before, because Mount Sinai is the place where
God is going to later give Moses the Law. So
(23:04):
Moses didn't stumble upon a random heel. He was led
unknowingly to a place that is saturated with divine significance,
a place where God has revealed himself and would do
so again and again to Moses. So it wasn't moses
navigational skills that got him there. It was God's sovereign leading,
(23:28):
even using the mundane task of shepherdy to position Moses
for destiny. I need you to understand something. Your wilderness
isn't just a holding pattern. Your wilderness is holy ground.
If God decides to meet you there, I get it.
You might feel stuck, you might feel forgotten, you might
(23:50):
feel frustrated, you might feel like you're just drifting through
life right now. But I came to tell somebody that
your wilderness has an address, Your wilderness has an expiration date,
and God knows exactly where you are. He can take
your mundane routine, your directionalists drifting, and he can lead
(24:11):
you right to the wall of divine encounter, right to
the place where He shows up, where he speaks, where
he reminds you of who you are and who you
are and why he called you in the first place.
So hear me. Your wilderness is not your end. It's
the unexpected pathway to the mountain of God. God has
(24:34):
something that he needs to say to you. So whatever
you do, don't despise your wilderness journey. Just about every
person that was called in this Bible, they had a
wilderness moment. They had a moment where they had to
be alone with God. And that might be the only
(24:54):
road that leads to horror. God doesn't always get you
out of the w wlderness. Can I tell you something
In the Gospel of Mark, after Jesus is baptized. After
the heaven, God speaks. From heaven, the Holy Spirit is
descending in the form of a dove. In the form
of a dove, God speaks, and he says, this is
(25:15):
my beloved son, and who I am well pleased? Do
you know in the Gospel of Mark? You only find
it in the Gospel of Mark. The Bible says that
the Spirit pulled up, putting Jesus in the car, drove
him to the wilderness, and dropped him off, and he
was alone there in the wilderness for forty forty is
the number of testing. Forty days without anything to eat
or anything to drink. Mar's Gospel says he was there
(25:38):
with the wild beast, and guess who came to tempt him? Say,
some of our wilderness moments are ordained by God. I
know that doesn't fit our theology, but there's something that
God is trying to strip off of You see, in
the wilderness. There's no room for pride in the wilderness.
(26:02):
There's no place for ego in the wilderness. And if
God is going to elevate you to where he's calling
you to, there are some things that God is going
to have to strip off of you. There are some
things that God is going to have to deal with. See,
Moses was skilled in all of the Egyptian ways. God
didn't need Moses to be skilled in all of the
(26:24):
Egyptian wisdom and ways. He needed to have time with
Moses because Moses was going to deliver his people, not
the Egyptians. Let's get a scripture for this. Isaiah, chapter
forty three, verse nineteen. Isaiah Chapter forty three, verse nineteen.
I want you to hear the words of the Lord
speaking to Israel. God says, behold, I am doing a
(26:45):
new thing now the spring sport. Do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers
in the desert. So what does that verse say. It's
saying to us that God specializes in the impossible. He
(27:07):
makes ways where there are no ways. He brings life
to desolate places. He can take your dry, dusty, directionless wilderness,
and he can turn it into a place where new
things spring forth, where rivers flow, and where He reveals
himself in very, very powerful ways. Your wilderness is not
(27:30):
a sign that God has abandoned you, but it is
an invitation for you to witness his creative power and
impossible circumstances. So I got a question for you. Are
you expecting God to meet you in your wilderness or
(27:53):
have you given up and you just wandering to the
west side of the desert. Listen to me. Moses spent
forty years looking this way and that way, trying to
fix things himself, burying his problems and drifting in the wilderness.
(28:15):
But God and his infinite wisdom and his infinite mercy
and perfect timing, he led that brother to horror. And
it was there at that mountain, in the most unexpected place,
after the longest delay, that God showed up and he
(28:38):
spoke to him. He called him by name, and that
next first And maybe you've been in your wilderness for
forty years, forty months, forty weeks, forty days, forty hours,
forty minutes. Maybe you feel for God, Maybe you feel stuck.
(28:59):
Maybe you feel like your life has no direction and
no purpose. Maybe you try to bury your problems in
the sand and the wilderness exposed now. But I want
you to understand that your wilderness is not your final destination.
Your wilderness, my wilderness, is just a backdrop for God's
(29:20):
next move in your life. Because everything that we've talked
about in the verses that we've read leads me to
one undeniable truth. God sees you. He knows where you are.
He was watching Moses the whole time. God is waiting
(29:42):
to meet you right there in the middle of your mess,
right up against the walls of your wilderness. So I
want to give you three called actions. It's three things
that I need you to do right now. And it's
not just information that I want to give you, but
(30:02):
it's activation. I want you to be activated. Number One,
Acknowledge your wilderness. You're writing notes, write this down. The
first thing you're gonna have to do, Man of God,
woman of God, is this acknowledge your wilderness. We all
(30:23):
have different wilderness experiences, no sense, and you're looking over
at somebody else's. You gotta deal with yours. Stop pretending
that you're fine, Stop pretending that everything is okay, Stop hiding,
stop trying to bury it. Look your wilderness square in
the eye and call it what it is. Is it
(30:47):
a job wilderness? Is it a marriage wilderness? Is it
a divorce wilderness? Is it a single wilderness? Is it
a financial wilderness? Is it a health wilderness? Name it
because hear hear me clearly, you can't conquer what you
don't confront. If you don't confront it, it's not going anywhere.
(31:10):
Turn to your neighbor in the chat and say, I'm
in a wilderness, but I'm not staying here. I'm not
staying here. I have an appointment with destiny, I have
an appointment with purpose. I'm not staying here. Is what
is God speaking to you right now? Your wilderness? Is
it a wilderness of your homemaking or is it a
wilderness that you just woke up to. You may have
(31:33):
just woke up and got word that you lost your job.
You may have woken up and got word that a
loved one has passed away. That's still a wilderness. But
you have to identify your wilderness. You have to confront
your wilderness. You have to take your wilderness to God.
This is why Peter said over in his epistle. And
(31:56):
who better to tell you this than Peter? He said,
Cast all all of your cares upon the Lord. Why
Peter said, because he cares for you. Knuckle ahead, Cast all,
not some of your cares, not only on Sunday, Cast
all of your cares on the Lord. Cast all of
your wilderness on the Lord. Why, because he cares for you. Okay,
(32:17):
it's number one, We got to confront it. Number two.
Stop looking side to side. Stop looking side to side
and look up. Moses looked this way in that way,
and he ended up lost for forty years. Stop relying
(32:41):
on your own strength. Stop relying on your own wisdom.
Stop thinking you have all of the answers to the test,
because you don't. Your solutions have not worked up until
this point. Stop comparing your wilderness to somebody else. Well,
I ain't got it that bad, or such as us. No,
(33:04):
we all have our own personal wilderness that we have
to deal with. Lift your eyes to the heels from
where your health comes from. Your health comes from the Lord.
Look up to God, who makes a way even in
the wilderness. Turns to your neighbor in the chat to say,
(33:25):
my help comes from the Lord. I can't do this,
We can't do this thing called life on our own.
The Bible says, all this in the world is the
lust of the eye of Us, and the flesh and
the pride of life. Those three are waiting on you
to wake up every single month morning. The LUs of
the eye of Us, of the flesh and the pride
of life. What's interesting about mods the situation is this,
(33:47):
it wasn't the devil that got him in this predicament.
He got hisself into this wilderness. Why because he looked
this way and he looked that way, analyzed the situation.
He felt like, Okay, nobody is watching. The coast is clear.
He killed the man and then with all of that
(34:08):
Egyptian wisdom and education and knowledge that he had, he
buried the man in the sand. You ever watched those
murder mystery kind of shows, they would have rapped Moses
of them in the first three minutes. Number three. Prepare
(34:30):
for your horr moment. Prepare for your horror moment. God
is leading you. Even if you feel like you're drifting,
even if life feels like it's drifting, God is leading you.
He is positioning you, even in your obscurity. Don't give up,
(34:51):
don't lose hope. Keep moving forward. Whatever you do, keep
moving forward, trusting that God is leading you to the
place of divine encounter. Get ready for your burning bush moment.
Get ready for the moment when God is going to
speak directly to you. I believe Later in that seventh verse,
(35:13):
he's going to tell Moses in Exodus chapter three. He's
going to say, I've heard the affliction of my people,
and I've come to answer. I've come to answer their cry.
So when God pulls up to Moses, he knows Moses past,
he knows what Moses did. I pray that you will
(35:35):
prepare yourself for your destiny and for your purpose and
your calling to be reignited right in the middle of
your wilderness. Sometimes you have to embrace that wilderness moment.
Sometimes your greatest growth will happen in your wilderness moment.
(35:56):
The thing about the wilderness is that it reveals exactly
who you are. I'm talking about when nobody is around,
no social media, nobody to text, nobody to call, nobody
to tweet, none of that. Just you and God. So
embrace it. But don't stay there. It's not your permanent address.
(36:21):
It's just preparation. It's preparation for where God is taking you.
The Bible says that if you are faithful over a
few things, then God will do what God will make
your ruler over many. So whatever God has placed in
your hands right now, and it's season of your life.
(36:41):
Wherever you are with a job, or without a job,
in a relationship, not in a relationship, struggling in your marriage,
struggling in your finances, struggling in your health. Wherever you are,
whatever wilderness you're dealing with, whatever God is placed in
your hands, be faithful over it. Ever says, do it
unto God and not unto man. And when you think
(37:03):
in that term, it changes your whole perspective. When you
work unto God, it changes your perspective. So I don't
want you to give up. I don't want you to
tap out. I want you to stay connected, stay in,
stay connected. I thought about this lesson for the most
(37:27):
of the most of today, and I want this message
to go out to my people, my people in the
back rope, my people in the front rope, my people
in the chat rope, my people on the overflow, my
people who almost gave up. God is with you in
(37:49):
the wilderness. God hasn't forgotten you. Your story isn't over.
Stop writing your obituary, stop writing your epithet. Your story
is not over. The walls around you are not prison walls,
and I'll start hanging stuff up on these walls. They
may just simply be walls of training ground. The walls
(38:12):
that are preparing you for the promise. So whatever you do,
stay in your word, keep taking notes, keep engaging, because
God is doing a new thing. God is making away.
He's going to lead you out of your wilderness and
into your destiny. Sometimes God will take you through something
(38:35):
so that you can go back and help somebody else.
Come on, somebody just putting a chat. It's not about me.
God needed Moses to be a leader and a deliverer
to over three million people. See, you don't see that.
(38:57):
In Exodus chapter three, verse one. Moses doesn't even see that.
Moses is a superstar in this Bible. He's gonna do
miracles you've never seen anywhere else in the scripture. This
man is going to part the red sea. He has
a staff in his hand when God is speaking to
him in Exodus chapter three, Verse one. Staff is nothing
(39:20):
but a stick, something that this man uses the God.
The sheet to keep the street, the sheet to whoop,
the sheet to lean on. It's just a stick. But
when Moses takes that stick, he lifts it to God.
Now what becomes the rod of God? And God does
miraculous powers and wonders with that stick. You have something
(39:44):
in your possession right now. I promise you that if
you just simply lifted up to God, God would do
some miraculous things with it. You have a past, you
have brokenness, you have tears, You have things that you've experienced,
things that you've survived that God wants to use. We
overcome the devil by the blood of the Lamb, and
(40:05):
by the word of our testimony. God wants to lift
your testimony up. This is only a test. Moses took
that stick. He held it out over the Red Sea,
and the red sea parted, and them people did the
electric slide right across that red sea. And when Pharaoh's
army came up from behind him, he reached it out again.
(40:28):
The warriors came back down, and Pharaoh's army drowned in
that red sea. Do you know scientists have found chariot
tracks at the bottom of that sea. Yeah. So I
wanted to pop out here and share this lesson, share
(40:51):
this teaching with someone to encourage you with where you are.
I want to thank you for joining me tonight in
this Bible sanctuary. I want you, if you haven't done
so already, please follow this page. I believe that somebody
who needs to hear what we've talked about tonight. Later on,
probably next week, we're going to be dropping an audio
(41:13):
link because I want to provide a platform where you
can go and listen to the audio teachings of these walls.
What I realized is that Facebook is not a place
for life podcasts. It's not a place where you can
just go and get information. So I want to create something,
or I want to be a part of something that
will help you to do that. I think sister Abigail
(41:35):
told me how much it was blessing her. I did
send a link last week, but that link was too
hard for some people to work around because it was
a large link, and Google will only scan like the
first twenty five megabytes of a link, and so because
it was so big that a warning will pop up
and tell people that hey, Google didn't scan the whole link.
(41:57):
So therefore you if you try to open it, you
open it edge all risk. So I don't want to
put anybody in that kind of bund So something is
coming that you'll be able to listen to these teachings
just like you listen to any of your other podcasts
that you're currently listening to now. So I'm excited about that.
But again, thank you all for jumping on with me.
(42:20):
I am endeavoring to do more of these. I want
us to really begin to build this family, really begin
to look and see in which ways that we can
help build this community. Even more so, I don't count
this as something that I just do, but I really
(42:44):
count this as purpose that God has called Mefore, because
the wilderness that I was once in the wilderness that
I came out of. That's the reason why this means
so much to me, and that's the reason why I
can speak to this because I've been in that wilderness
place and it got to a place where I began
to embrace my wilderness because that's really where I learned
(43:05):
the word of God. I didn't learn the word of
God in the seminary school. I didn't learn the word
of God at a church. I learned to God. I
learned the Word of God sitting in a in an apartment.
And a few weeks ago I went back down to
Champagne and I actually went and pulled up at that
apartment and I took a picture of it from the outside.
I got it on my phone now. And the reason
(43:26):
why that was important to me is because that apartment
represented my wilderness. It represented a space that I was
in when I was contemplating suicide. And so sitting there
on the outside taking a picture of that apartment, tears
just started running down my face because there were tears
of joy because I was just thanking God that even
(43:49):
though I was in that wilderness place, I didn't stay
in that wilderness place, and a lot came, a lot
of growth came out of that wilderness situation for me.
So that's why this lesson is so near and so
dear to my heart because I've lived it, and that's
why I can talk to you about it. That's why
I can encourage you that there is a process that
(44:11):
God has to take you through. There are some things
that God has to strip off of you if God
is going to use you the way that I know
he can use you. So the thing that I want
to encourage all of you to do is simply this,
Submit to the process. Submit to your wilderness. Just say yes, Lord,
submit to it. Because there's something that God wants to
(44:32):
show you. There's something that God wants to teach you.
God wants to mold you, He wants to shape you,
and he can't do it in the noise and the
chaos and everything that's around you. So sometimes he has
to call you to himself. And that's what he did
for me, and some of you may be going through
that right now. But I promise you don't lose heart.
(44:53):
The Bible says be not weary in well doing, for
in do season we'll read if we don't give up.
So before I get up out of here, I wanted
to thank everybody that pulled up on today, those of
you that are on the Facebook side, I appreciate you, guys.
(45:15):
I appreciate the time that you spent. I'm trying to
get the names right quite I saw some names on here. Oh,
so I want to thank by the Dana, since the Samika,
since the Erica Brother, Bobby Piece, Renee Sins, Jessica Grayson's
(45:36):
are up in the building. Brother Sam by the Dana.
Love you guys so much. We'll be back Saturday. You'll
get me again, how about that? So I'll be back
Saturday bringing another lesson. We're still gonna be talking about
these walls that we're dealing with, and so stay here,
stay connected, whatever you do. I know there are a
(45:57):
lot of you who don't even attend quote unquote, and
I get it. I understand some of the things that
I see in church sometimes really frustrates me as well.
But this is the thing I want to say above
anything else. Whatever you do, don't turn your back on God.
Don't turn your back on God. All churches are not,
you know, filled with foolishness. But don't give up on God. Gay.
(46:24):
Whatever you do, whatever you're going through, whatever challenges you
may face, do not give up on God. And so,
brothers in the Word, we're here. We're not going anywhere.
We're going to follow the Word of God. So if
you follow us, that's what you're going to be following.
You're going to be following the Word of God as well.
All right. So I want to thank you all for
being here on tonight, and I need you to get
into the Word of God, because the Word of God
(46:45):
will get into you and we'll see you next side. Peace.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.