Separation Time in the Desert

Jonah 2:3-4 (NKJV) For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me...Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; Yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’

I’ve been reading a study on how God has chosen to use ‘separation’ in the lives of many people He calls into service.

Before Moses was called to lead the people of Israel of bondage he spent 40 years herding sheep and goats in the desert and they weren’t even his own animals. God used that time to prepare Moses and free him from his ‘self’ and worldly mentalities. Only then was Moses ready to take the stand for God’s chosen people and speak for the Lord to Pharaoh. Then it was back to the desert for another 40 years Moses went; this time leading a bunch of ungrateful complainers needing the same lessons on trusting and following God alone.

Look at all the times David spent alone in the wilderness; first, as the entrusted sheepherder in his family; then later as he ran from a jealous, mentally unbalanced Saul. Later still, he had to run and hide from his own son. And this was the man God called, “A man after my own heart.” Each time David was separated from his home, family, position and followers, God used the hardships to bring David to a place of better serving Him and emptying him of ‘self.’

The reference scripture today is from Jonah. You can believe Jonah felt a huge separation time in the belly of the whale. He was separated from God by his disobedience, separated from people and even the light of day as he pondered his fate and bad attitudes and decisions in the complete darkness and unpleasant digestive process inside the whale.

Separation from all that is familiar; family, hearth, and friends is difficult at best; most of the time it is pure hell on earth. The worse separation of all is from God. You just don’t get any more alone than that. Many years ago in what I call ‘another lifetime’ I went through such a time of separation. In what seemed like one fatal swoop of fate, I lost my home, my job, my dream, and worse of all, my sons. My sons did not die or anything, they went to live with their dad and ‘other mother’ because I had lost my job and home. But to a mother’s heart, the pain was devastating. I had everything I thought I wanted and dreamed of one day and then the next, it was gone. All of it was gone! I had my own personal Moses/David/Jonah experience. That’s what it took for me to lay down my agenda, my way, my will and totally surrender my life to God Almighty. I remember so vividly; the pain, the fear, and desperation of total defeat and surrender. I even remember the actual words, “God, I have screwed up my life as much as I possibly can. Take it, it’s Yours.”

Not the usually wordy, poetic stuff you hear from me, granted, but it could not have been more sincere and genuine. That evening, I asked God to take control, have His way with me and my life. I did not have the strength physically, emotionally, mentally and most especially spiritually, to make another decision without Him, lift my hands in effort to make anything happen or even to reason out a logical thought. Nope, wasn’t gonna happen! For the first time I KNEW what the scripture meant when it said I can do nothing on my own.

In my tiny room I could smell all the sheep of 40 years of herding, feel the chill of the caves carved in the hillside, trembled in fear of my enemies approaching and ‘see’ the darkness I had brought on myself. It was then, in that moment I realized God had taken away everything that was important to me, everything that took my time and efforts, and everything I had been placing above Him in my life. He took it all so He would have my undivided attention for the first time in my miserable little life. My classroom and sentence was desert time. It wasn’t long before I was praising Him for the very same sentence! My life profoundly changed as I was being transformed into someone willing and able to serve Him.

From the study I am reading come these final words: As we see with Jonah, the Lord can use solitude to transform disobedience into obedience. God doesn’t override our free will, but He goes all out to help us exercise it in the right direction. When our will is dead set against what He wills and wants for us, He can put us in a position where we finally decide to surrender and submit to Him.