But, God, This Isn’t a Garden! Intimacy

Intimacy. It’s something we crave—no, we need—as human beings. We crave it because we need it. That’s perhaps a better way of putting it. God created the first human, we call that person Adam, and then decided it wasn’t good for that person to be alone. Cue Eve to enter the world’s stage. As people we were literally created to be deeply connected with others and God. 

Here’s the issue, life gets busy. Hectic. Chaotic. It can feel like calendars get filled and doubly filled faster than one can think. Sure, we can grab a few minutes to chat with God or friends and family while cruising down the highway from Point A to Point B, but is that all our soul craves and needs? Is there more out there? 

OH, YES! Let’s take a look at Jesus’s life. Luke records in Chapter 5 that Jesus “frequently” withdrew to the wilderness to pray. Jesus, the One Whose life and ministry literally flipped the religious systems and world upside down frequently chose the wilderness in order to maintain His deep connection with the Father. Wow. Because, if I’m going to be honest (really honest), I think if I look at time logs from my life’s history, I don’t often choose the wilderness. I think a time log would show a much higher frequency of cruising-the-highway chats rather than intentional time in solitude. YIKES! 

Not that there’s anything wrong with those chat times. The Bible does tell us to “pray at all times” (see 1 Thes. 5:17), but Jesus’s life—as busy as He was, as sought-after as He was—gives us a very clear model: Choose the wilderness for intimacy with the Father. 

Oh, the wilderness. A place where we go alone. A place of solitude. A place where we acknowledge our dependency upon the Lord, a place where our souls get stripped until they’re completely bare. It’s not fun. But it is good.  

This place, it might look like life’s biggest let-down and unmet expectations. Maybe someone made you a promise, they’d support you and back you, then they backed out. Maybe someone said they’d pour into you and help push you out, only to push you down or stab you in the back. Maybe you were overlooked and pushed aside again and again and again; who knows, there are as many stories as there are people. How can this be good?  

It’s good because in those places we have to dig deep, and the only place to go (other than our own selves—NOT recommended btw!!) is God. David found himself in such a place. At one point, he was refugee in Philistine territory, his family was torn away from him by raiding enemies, and he was abandoned even by his most loyal followers. In that moment, the Scriptures tell us that “David strengthened himself in the Lord” (see 1 Sam. 30:6). And what happened? The Lord met him there, gave him victory over the raiders, and he was crowned king of Judah and later also of Israel. Wow! Now, what if he had imploded or exploded? What if he didn’t take this wilderness journey opportunity to deepen his intimacy and faith in God? I have a sneaking suspicion his story would have ended very differently.  

David didn’t know exactly what was going to happen next in his story, but he did know God’s goodness and faithfulness. He didn’t know the next lines in the script of his life, but he did know God’s promises over his life and knew that God would keep them. He had a low-of-the-low moment in his life, and in that time went to the one place he knew he could count on—God. Wow. Just wow.  

There is no way this felt good. There were no good feelings coming from within himself, his friends, his family, or his immediate situation; this was a wilderness moment if I ever saw one, and yet God used it to bring David into that one-step-deeper place in his life. It was that one-step-deeper into God that God used to cultivate faith, intimacy, and dependency in David’s heart, just moments (days?) before he would begin to step into the destiny prophesied over him so many years ago. It was a wilderness to David and a garden to God.  

And so, we can gain courage and inspiration from David and so many others that have gone before us. Those who have trusted God in the wilderness, who learned how to come to a place of complete surrender and utter dependency and who, in that place, forged deep, vibrant intimacy with the Father. Because God doesn’t bring us to the wilderness without purpose and intention, He brings us there because He’s calling us deeper and He’s yearning for us to have that next–level revelation of Who He is. How will we respond? Will we see the wilderness as a barren land or as a place of rootedness that will yield a wellspring later?