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Lesson 10: Don’t waste the wilderness. At the end of my first trip to Israel our leader asked us what had been the most memorable part of our 17 day study tour. Had you asked me that question before the trip, I would have guessed that my answer would have been, “the time...
Lesson 9: Choose trust not control. The most famous wilderness resident in the day of Jesus was Herod the Great. He came from the wilderness area of Idumea. He built at least nine major palaces from the Mediterranean Sea to the Herodion near Bethlehem, to Jerusalem itself, and then...
Lesson 8: Risk Precedes Miracle. When it came time for the ancient Israelites to end their forty years of wandering in the desert, they came to the River Jordan. To enter the Promised Land they had to cross the river. That may not seem difficult but as desert wanderers they did not...
Lesson 7: Hospitality is the key to survival. One of the highlights of the trips that I took to Israel was a visit to a Bedouin encampment in the wilderness. Bedouins do not move around in Israel much anymore because the government trucks in water to them. Now most of the men have jobs in...
Lesson 6: God gently leads in the wilderness. On the way to Colorado we passed the gravesite of Charles Goodnight, perhaps the most famous Texas rancher of the 19th century and “the father of the Texas panhandle.” He pioneered cattle drives on what would be called the...
Lesson 5: Plant yourself by the stream (Psalm 1:3). Doubtless you have heard the old maxim that the three most important factors in real estate are “location, location, and location.” These are also the three key factors in planting a tree that will flourish in a semi arid...
Lesson 4: God gives us just enough. My first funeral that I ever officiated took place in a funeral home. The podium was under a set of pink lights. Those lights combined with my contact lens to make the pages of my worship book and Bible appear blank to me. So, I had to do everything from...
The Wilderness is a place of preparation. Most of us are aware that God took the freed Hebrew slaves to the Promised Land by way of the wilderness. The trip from Egypt to Canaan was normally an eleven day journey but it took forty years! Why the long route? One could argue that this...
Lesson 2: The wilderness is a place of intimacy with God. Though many people often point to the violence found in the Old Testament, I believe that at its core it is a love story. The love story is between God and the people of ancient Israel. It describes a marital relationship (This is...
Lesson 1: God is at home in the wilderness. What surprised me most when I first went to Israel was how rocky and desert like it was. In fact, seventy per cent of Israel is desert. Another word for desert in the Bible can be “wilderness.” The patriarchs Abraham and Sarah, Isaac...