Hone Your Wilderness Skills

April 20

It is with many enterprises as with striking fire; we do not meet with success except by reiterated efforts, and often at the instant when we despaired of success. Francoise de Maintenon

I wasn't a very good scout. I have never been a good camper. The skills they tried to teach in our troop meetings were lost upon me and I've not ventured forth into the real-life application of them. I, for example, have never successfully built a fire in the wilderness using only the humble tools available in a remote location. If it were up to me, in fact, fire would not yet have been discovered.

Maybe I simply haven't tried enough. According to de Maintenon, repeated efforts are required to build a fire by striking sticks or stones, and I have never pursued the task to success—perhaps because I have never known the want of a match.

Sometimes in life, as in building a fire in the wilderness, our failure to attain what we think we desire springs more from our reluctance to strive toward it as from the lack of the necessary tools to achieve it. Sometimes we simply don't want it enough to persist. Matthew 7:7 tells us to “Keep on asking; keep knocking…” Jesus recommends persistence in our prayers, persistence in our efforts.

Sometimes our seeming roadblocks are set up by God Himself to keep us from pursuing goals He knows are not right for us. Sometimes we simply aren't sure. One thing we do know with certitude—the Lord has given us His 'handbook' for life that, like the Scout Handbook gives us insight into how to perform the tasks that may be required of us in the wilderness—in those places where the tools on which we rely aren't available. When we have no matches, we will certainly continue rubbing the sticks together until we gain the spark that gives us fire.

My prayer for you is that you will not weary in your endeavor to produce the good things your heart desires; that you'll not "weary in well doing," but be among those who are promised that they will, "reap if you faint not," (Galatians 6:9). This very promise suggests that pursuing good goals, endeavoring to achieve God's promises, can be a laborious task.

We don't weary when things go smoothly and without effort. No, we weary when we must persist without evident success. What we often mistake as the Lord's indifference to our plight, His failure to assist in our efforts, His refusal to hear our prayers, is really His standing aside to allow us to hone our spiritual 'wilderness skills' so we may become successful in praying through, so we may gain the confidence that comes when we receive the answers to our prayers.

Remain steadfast in rubbing those sticks together! You will produce the fire of faith that you long to have burning within your soul! Jesus wants you to be a believer of power and He is allowing you to hone your spiritual wilderness skills. Only time will reveal how many people will be lifted up from despair, how many precious ones will be lifted from the dark pit of lost-ness into the light of life in Christ because one resolute person of faith allowed Jesus to make him an effective guide through the wilderness by his own emergence from the dark forest of anxiety and despair into the glorious clearing that is bathed in Christ's glorious light.