The Mercy of a Long Wilderness

How would you define living your best life?

I once thought a perfect life would mean no physical disability, no chronic pain, and having everything I wanted. But I’ve come to see that the best life is anything that draws me closest to Jesus.

My easy years did the opposite. My once-vibrant college faith gave way to an all-consuming career. I still went to church, believed in Jesus, and even led a small group, but life was going so well that I no longer sought him daily. I could talk the talk, but I didn’t realize this successful life cost me the one thing that mattered most.

We all face this danger when life goes well. We tend to fear seasons of suffering, wilderness, and waiting, but these are not the worst threats to our faith. The greater danger is that in times of prosperity, when we finally receive what we want, we won’t think about God at all.

The Offer We Should Fear

In Exodus 32, the Israelites waited forty days after Moses went up the mountain, and in their impatience, they told Aaron to make them gods. That’s the heart of idolatry: desiring gods who support whatever we want, gods we can control. Israel took the gold that God had provided, melted it down, made a calf, and then credited it with their deliverance: “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4).

God threatened to destroy the people and start over with Moses. But instead, he relented and made them an astonishing offer: He would give them the land he had promised, drive out their enemies, and even send an angel to lead the way. But he would not go with them (Exodus 33:1–3).

God offered Israel every earthly gift they had waited for: Land flowing with milk and honey. The end of wandering, the end of boring manna, and the end of total dependence. A future where they could thrive on their own.

Just without God.

Your version of the promised land may be a healed body, a restored relationship, financial security, or the life you’ve been praying for. If God offered it to you and said, “You can have it all, but I will keep my distance,” how would you respond?

Why Moses Said No

Moses refused the offer. He wanted nothing to do with a land void of God.

When God pledged, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest,” Moses took hold of it: “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here” (Exodus 33:14–15). He preferred manna and daily dependence to vineyards, ease, and a God who kept his distance.

Moses knew the mark of God’s people was not geography or prosperity but the nearness of God. “Is it not in your going with us,” he asked, “so that we are distinct . . . from every other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:16). He knew what the people couldn’t fully understand yet: God himself was their promise. Not the land. Not the blessing. Not the life that finally worked. God. Without him, no amount of milk and honey could satisfy their hearts, for only in his presence is there “fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

Years later, before Israel finally entered the promised land, Moses warned against the danger awaiting them should they forget this truth: “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God . . . when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them” (Deuteronomy 8:11–12). He knew the promised land without God can be a life so full of good things that we no longer feel our need for him.

Wilderness as Mercy

The wilderness, on the other hand, destroys the illusion that we can provide for ourselves. It’s where tomorrow is uncertain, our strength fails, our plans unravel, and we finally discover that underneath our struggles are his everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Moses told the Israelites that God fed them with manna “that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). He carried them all the way “as a man carries his son” (Deuteronomy 1:31). And the manna itself preached a daily sermon: It covered the ground every morning with just enough for the day and a promise of more tomorrow.

“The promised land without God can be a life so full of good things that we no longer feel our need for him.”

Your wilderness may be a terminal diagnosis, heartache over a loved one, the long ache of singleness or childlessness, the loss that doesn’t seem to heal. But looking back over your life, what has truly drawn your heart closest to God? Has it been his miraculous rescues, or his daily, sustaining help?

In my story, God has answered prayers that once seemed impossible. Meeting my husband was one of those precious answers. But the disability and pain I once longed to escape are still with me and intensifying. As I reflect on both kinds of seasons, I see that what has most satisfied me, what has taught me to love God for who he is, has not been deliverance. It has been sustenance. The daily manna of his word. The hidden strength he gives when I cannot go on. The comfort of his presence when nothing around me changes.

The wilderness is not a sign that God has abandoned us. It is the battlefield where we learn to love God — a mercy that refuses to let us be satisfied with any of God’s gifts without being satisfied in him.

A Friend in the Battlefield

My friend knows this battlefield well. At his lowest, he felt it was easier to die than to live one more day with his debilitating chronic pain. Then a line from Charles Spurgeon convicted him that he had been asking God only for his own ease, with no thought of God’s glory. He saw that while his needs mattered, they were not the center; God’s glory was.

He went on to share, “I realized that my physical pain was just the battlefield, but the real battle was for my heart.” That’s true of us as well. Whatever we’re facing, whether it’s prosperity or pain, the battle is always for our hearts. Will we live for our own ease or for God’s glory? Will we settle for a life that finally works without him, or will we say, “Hallowed be your name,” even from a hospital bed?

The Better Portion

Psalm 73 puts language to what Moses knew at Sinai. The psalmist watched the prosperity of those who ignored God while his own obedience cost dearly. But when he entered the sanctuary and saw their end, he declared,

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25–26)

This was Moses’s anthem at Sinai. This is what my friend is clinging to in his illness. This is what the Spirit can teach us in our own wilderness and promised lands.

“Better manna with God than milk and honey without him.”

And this is what Christ has secured for us. Moses could only plead for God’s presence; Jesus purchased it. He was forsaken so we could be brought near. Because of him, God does not merely go with his people but now dwells in us by his Spirit. The true promised land ahead of us is defined by one hope: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:3).

The greatest danger in your life is not that you will suffer long or wait in the dark, but that you will finally get what you want and find you can enjoy it with very little of God. To be satisfied in the gifts and not the Giver is to miss everything and not even realize what you’ve missed. Better manna with God than milk and honey without him.

Moses saw God’s glory, and once you have seen it, no land — however rich, however safe, however long you waited — will ever be enough on its own. May God so meet us in our wildernesses that we can say with Moses, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring me up from here” — and mean it.