Lessons From The Wilderness
Steve’s Story
The idea of a wilderness experience runs throughout the Bible. It is a time of testing that drives us out of our comfort zones to an unfamiliar setting. It is unnerving and unsettling, but it is also the passageway to the promise land.
When you step into Crossroads Church, the first faces you will see are those of Steve and Venisha. They create a welcoming atmosphere with their smiles, laughs, and hugs. If you know them, you realize they are multitalented and could choose to serve the church in many different ways but they feel called to serve as warm hosts because of the story you are about to hear.
The Story
Just a few years ago, Steve seemed to have it all. He had a good job from which he could retire in a few more years. He had no worries financially and spent money without a care. He had a loving, encouraging wife and two great sons who were maturing into manhood with great character. But as with most picture perfect stories, there was more than met the eye. Steve’s job was causing him to grow callous and even harsh towards others. Year after year of working in a prison had become dehumanizing. Empathy had disappeared. On top of this, his financial prosperity had not driven him to thankfulness but had led him to complacency. He took for granted the blessings that came from God and fell for the lie of self-sufficiency.
Henri Nouwen says, “displacement is a discipline by which we can unmask the illusion of having it together and thus experience our real condition, which is that we, like other people, are pilgrims on the way, that we are broken in search of healing, that we are sinners in need of grace.” Displacement is the word that the desert fathers used to describe wilderness experiences. Situations that radically remove the comforts and false securities from our life and leave us naked and vulnerable before God.
Steve’s displacement began with losing his job. This one event was the beginning of a perfect storm. Soon after, Steve finds another job but then sustains an injury which ended that job and forced him onto the couch for a time of recovery. On top of this,Venisha losses her job during this time as part of a company-wide layoff. With financial stresses mounting, they launch a new business that did not go as planned and resulted in more stress financially and relationally. Perhaps hardest, they began to feel alone. Steve’s friends had disappeared as times became hard. Laying on his back, stressed, alone, discouraged, and at times very angry, Steve was broken. But honestly, long before losing the job, when everything looked perfect, he was already broken. He had allowed complacency to steal the intimacy he had once known with God. The recent situations did not break him, they just uncovered the truth that comfort had hid. The light that now shone on his brokenness brought a terrible sting but it was producing healing and humility.
The beauty or danger of a wilderness experience is that we have a say in how long it lasts. At the lowest point, Venisha decided to be the cheerleader, the voice of hope in a dark place. She became the Joshua and Caleb that said, there may be giants but we can take this land. Together they began to take steps to address their brokenness. These steps included counseling, a commitment to being thankful, giving faithfully, and being friendly. Each of these steps was purposeful. Counseling to address the anger and depression, thankfulness to address the callousness. Faithful giving to show their recognition of the blessings of God and friendliness so others might not feel the same loneliness that they had experienced. These were the stones they chose with which they would fight giants. These steps showed their belief in a God that could restore, and it showed their willingness to be obedient even in the midst of darkness so thick they could not see the way out.
Today
Giants began to fall. In miraculous ways, Steve and Venisha began to experience restoration in all areas of their lives. Today they are deeper in love than ever. They have great jobs, bright futures, and joy that is infectious. In their pain, they found their purpose and now serve the church out of their victory. Callousness has become compassion and self-sufficiency has given way to humility.
“For Thomas Merton, displacement meant leaving the university and going to a monastery. For Martin Luther, it meant leaving the monastery and becoming a reformer. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it meant returning to his country from the safety of the United States and becoming a prisoner of the Nazis. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it meant leaving the ‘ordinary and proper place’ of blacks and leading a movement for civil rights. For Mother Teresa, it meant leaving the convent and starting an order to care for the ‘poorest of the poor’ in Calcutta,” and for Steve and Venisha it meant leaving the comfortable and finding their calling to love. It meant becoming a smile, a hug, and a friend to all the fellow broken ones that enter the doors of Crossroads Church.
Call To Action
Andrew Murray said, “….as a Christian community we are people who together are called out of our familiar places to unknown territories, out of our ordinary and proper places to the places where people hurt and where we can experience with them our common human brokenness and our common need for healing.” I pray for Crossroads to become a place where no one feels alone. I pray we show radical hospitality. That together, we love all who enter and I pray those who are currently in a wilderness moment would follow the example of Steve and Venisha and obediently, faithfully believe in a God of restoration and renewal.
