The Bible Trains Us to Allegorize Our Seasons
What is God doing in my life? Our hearts choke out this question in times of intense difficulty. The Bible describes suffering most often in one of two ways—as a drought or a storm, fire or flood, hot or cold. I have the drought in mind. The wilderness. Have you been through a season you would call a wilderness, or are you in one right now? You have suffered long, you’re weary, your vision is hazy, and there seems to be no end to your journey in sight?
God tells us that we will walk through many seasons in this life, and he has ordained them according to his wisdom (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We often allegorize our seasons as “mountain tops,” “storms,” “valleys,” or, “the wilderness.” We don’t do this because of some poetic inclination with us, we do this because for those of us who read the Bible, God has taught us to think this way.
Instead of giving us a rubric for living, God wrote an epic story. He wrote a story that actually happened, and he led his people through fire and water, valleys and wilderness, hid them in clefts of rock, and empowered them to face down giants. And they told us all about these experiences, knowing that we would face the same world with the same kind of hearts and our only hope would be their same God.
The Wilderness Season
God devoted a few books of the Bible to the experience of being in the wilderness. He led millions of his people through the hot sands of the Middle East for forty years. In many ways, it was an ugly time. Read the book of Numbers and you will know God’s people didn’t enjoy it. They sinned in grievous ways. They were hot, weary, and failing to understand God’s purposes for this time.
Perhaps you have also suffered for a long time, not in an overwhelming flood of emotions, events, and drowning sort of way, but in a constant, enduring, hot, wearying sort of way. Your trouble has persisted, and you walk through days where your heart feels hot. Your spiritual vision is hazy, your heart thirsty, and hungry always for all you believe you lack. You can relate in part to the experience of God’s people. You know the wilderness.
What God May Be Doing in Your Wilderness Season
There are a few verses in the book of Deuteronomy where God interprets his people’s wilderness season for them. His lens is much clearer, brighter, cleaner, and better than theirs. As I read it, I was drawn to think of a challenging time in my own life, one that I would identify as my wilderness experience. And as I read God’s Word to his people, my own memory of that season was reframed. Color flooded those memories and God shot warmth into my heart where all I remembered was trouble and bitterness.
What changed my perspective? A glimpse of God’s goodness. The glimpse he gives us in Deuteronomy.
I want you to see God’s kind work in his people’s lives during their wilderness years, in hopes that you might expect God to show the same kindness to you in your wilderness season.
I cannot say what God is doing in your life, but from this part of God’s Word I learn what he might be doing in your life, and in mine. And whatever he’s up to, these verses teach us to suspect he’s up to far greater good than we might perceive.
“Remember All the Way”
We are going to walk through Deuteronomy 8:1-5 to discover God’s intentions for Israel’s wilderness season in hopes that we might learn something about his intentions for our own.
God spoke these words to the people of Israel as they stood on the edge of the promised land, at the close of their wilderness season. Here’s what God says,
“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years…” (Deuteronomy 8:2 NIV)
Sometimes we see memory as our enemy, especially when it comes to difficult things. But as God’s people stand on the edge of their new season—on the edge of relief and blessing—he says, Wait. Look back.
What does he draw their attention to? Remember the pain? The lessons? The failures? The journey?
If God were standing there, you could imagine his hand slipping into the hand of one of his weary wilderness followers listening as he says, remember how I led you all the way?
God tells his people to look back and think of him—all he did, all he provided. Regardless of the disillusion or difficulty they experienced, there was God before them, leading them onward, and he points behind them and says, I was there all along.
If you have put your trust in Jesus, then God has promised to never leave you nor forsake you (Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5). He has become your Shepherd to lead you all your days, in every season, all the way. And so, every time you look back on a season in your life, these words belong to you also, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way.”
In the wilderness, God has not forsaken us. Despite our doubts, he is leading us. And he is doing so much more. Here is God’s own testimony to his work in the wilderness.
“I Have Led You into Affliction”
I’m sure there were days when God’s people woke up to another day in the wilderness and thought, how did we get here again? And perhaps the same question runs through your mind.
God knew there would be days when in the comfort of a new, blessed, less troublesome season his people might wipe from their memory the difficult time they endured (Deuteronomy 8:10-11). But he wanted them to remember.
Why bring to mind waking up to another day of enduring a hot desert? Nothing but tan rocks for miles, the horizon always blurred by the sweltering sun, dry throats from thirst and the ache of hungry stomachs with no provision in sight?
Because they might wrongly remember such suffering as merely misfortune. What an unfortunate time that was, they might have thought.
No, God says, I led you into that affliction. Look at what God says:
Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble [afflict] and test you… He humbled [afflicted] you, causing you to hunger… (Deuteronomy 8:2-3 NIV)
You might think after reading this that God’s first goal in the wilderness is to humble us, meaning remove pride from our hearts. But the word “humble” here is most often translated in the Bible as “afflict.”1 And that gives us quite a different understanding of what the Lord says to us here. He led his people into the wilderness to afflict them. Later on, he will say that he afflicted them—how?—by letting them hunger. And he will conclude by explaining that “as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you” (Deuteronomy 8:5).
We have not yet seen why God led his people into the wilderness to afflict them, but he owns that he did. We will see that God’s purposes were kind (Psalm 147:17). But before that, let me make a few quick points.
First, be careful to not write off a troublesome time in your life as an unfortunate event—as though God was attending to other business and left you to wander and wade through a wilderness season alone. If you belong to Jesus Christ, God never leaves or forsakes you, and he leads you too all the way, including into valleys and wildernesses (Psalm 23:4).
Second, here are two comforts in the Scriptures when we read that God led his people into the wilderness to afflict them.
First, that God-sent affliction always comes from a compassionate, loving heart. For we know from his own testimony in Scripture that, “though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men” (Lamentations 3:32-33 ESV).
Second, that God led Jesus in the very same manner. For we read that, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry” (Luke 4:1-2 NIV). Jesus knows what it is to be led by God into the wilderness and face intense physical and spiritual affliction.
So we ache to know, what is God doing in this wilderness affliction?
1. The Lord Is Testing You
God wanted to know what was in his people’s hearts, to know whether they would obey him. Although their hearts already lay open before God, perhaps he wanted them to know what was in their hearts as well (Proverbs 15:11).
Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. (Deuteronomy 8:2 NIV)
Is it not a gift to know what’s truly in our hearts?
We may believe all sorts of self-deceptions about the measure of our strength, the strength of our faith, and the goodness of our hearts. God’s people thought they loved him, and yet quickly worshiped a cow in his stead (Exodus 32). God’s people may have thought they trusted him after they watched him part the red sea, until it was mealtime and their thoughts darkened immediately, assuming he had murderous intentions towards them (Exodus 16:3).
When the Israelites looked back on their wilderness time, God wanted them to remember all that they learned about their own hearts, all the times when they saw their hearts laid bare and raw by suffering, and what came of it.
If you belong to Jesus, in any affliction, God will also test your faith and your obedience to him, and he wants you to consider this process a joy (James 1:2). For when you’re shocked with the ugliness of your sin as suffering strips you bare, Jesus’ sacrifice for you and God’s steadfast love toward you will become more precious to you. God’s intention is to show you where change needs to take place that you might mature (James 1:4). He wants to test the genuineness of your faith and strengthen your faith, which is precious to him (1 Peter 1:7).
Can you catch the sweetness of God’s words to his people here? They’re on the brink of immense joy, ready to take God’s hand into a new adventure. And he pauses and says, Remember? And their memory floods—with sins that lurked deep under the surface of their consciousness, exposed by the discomfort of the desert, now forsaken and forgiven; with soul tantrums calmed by their compassionate and tender God; with those moments of decision when they rebelled and found their God to be rich in mercy.
When Jesus was tested in the wilderness, what was in his heart was raw love for, devotion to, and obedience to God (Matthew 4:1-11). He has given each one of those who trust in him his own righteousness as a gift (Romans 3:24). Unlike God’s people in the wilderness who seemed to fail again and again, God has given us the hope of endurance because Jesus now lives in us by his Spirit (James 1:2; Colossians 1:27).
In tough times, God will test your heart too. You will remember attitudes and actions that required repentance and that only the shed blood of Jesus shed could heal for you. But by the grace and power of his Holy Spirit at work in you, your memory will also include times you praised him when it felt like there was no earthly reason to, times you chose to love him when in human terms it would cost you, and times you believed him, despite the seeming impossibility of his promises.
As you remember affliction, remember what God revealed about your heart—and how his Spirit kindly proved to you the genuineness of your faith.
2. The Lord Is Teaching You
God wants his people to know that he led them into the wilderness. He wants them to remember all that they learned about their own hearts. But God also wants them to remember how they learned to depend on his Word. Listen to what the Israelites hear next:
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 8:2 ESV)
One day at a time God’s people would receive food from his hand for that day (Exodus 16:4). By raining down bread from heaven on them daily he taught them to look to him for all their needs, and that he would never fail them. In the same way that the Israelites gathered manna for a day, so we need God’s Word as our daily nourishment. Day by day we must go to the bread of life, Jesus, to receive what we most need (John 6:48).
As Israel looked back on their wilderness wanderings, God wanted them to call to mind the mornings when they would go about and look outside and find that God had provided again—just enough, just what they needed for that day. He wanted them to remember the times God spoke, and how it did more for their soul than manna could do for their hungry bodies.
If you belong to Jesus, then he is your bread of life (John 6:35). When your soul languishes under the harsh conditions of a wilderness season, he will feed you too with his own Word. But like the Israelites, you must also go out every day and gather the spiritual food he has provided for you.
Every day seek Jesus as the nourishment you need. Open your Bible to hear his voice, open your soul to him in prayer (Psalm 25:1), and receive him as your daily bread. Every day, you will find him to be enough. And when you look back, you will remember how precious his Words were to you in this wilderness season.
3. The Lord Is Providing for You
God told his weary people to look back over their shoulder, and to remember. But then he turns their attention elsewhere. He asks them to look down. They hear these words:
Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. (Deuteronomy 8:4 NIV)
So they looked down at their clothes and shoes. And when they do so we expect a gasp—the kind of gasp that came from the servants who slipped on Cinderella’s shoe and found it to be a match, the kind of gasp that came from Lucy when she pushed passed some coats in a wardrobe and found herself in Narnia—the kind of gasp that comes from witnessing a miracle.
God’s people look down at their clothes and find they don’t look homeless and haggard, as though the wilderness got the better of them. They look down at their feet, healthy and happy in their sandals. They were unharmed. The wilderness did its work without consuming them (Isaiah 43:2).
If you have put your trust in Jesus, then God has also clothed you. He equips you intentionally for exactly the kind of difficulty you will face. He has clothed you in armor, and given you shoes to wear as part of that armor (Ephesians 6:15). From here to heaven, that clothing will never fail you, never wear, or need replacement.
As you look back on any season of your life, no matter how difficult, you will also be able to look down, and find that the peace of God, the righteousness of Jesus, the Word of God, the company of other believers, the hope of your salvation, and the truth have not failed you (Ephesians 6:10-17). You wear them still and they have not worn out.
4. The Lord Loves You
After looking back at what God has done and looking down at his provision clothing them, God looks his people in the eye, so to speak, and tells them what he wants them to know.
The Lord says to his people,
Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. (Deuteronomy 8:5 NIV)
How has God treated his people? As a Father. He has dealt with them as a loving, present, intentional dad. He frames their experience not as an exercise, but as the fruit of a relationship. God’s people are not just an object whose integrity needs testing; they’re children who need loving rearing. To further understand the Lord’s words here, we will get help from other Scriptures. The book of Hebrews tells us,
God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:10-11 NIV)
And so the in the book of Proverbs we hear God’s loving voice:
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in. (Proverbs 3:11-12 NIV)
We often take discipline to mean punishment. Discipline means “the whole training and education of children…instruction which aims at the increase of virtue.”2 Discipline doesn’t mean God’s punishment for our misbehavior; but rather the necessary instruction and intervention needed for us to mature.
Only intentional fathers discipline their children. Only fathers who delight in their kids take the time to train them. Behind the painful experience of forty years of wilderness wandering stood God the Father, attending to the spiritual wellbeing of the little nation of Israel because they were his.
All people will suffer. But if you belong to Jesus, when you look on your suffering, however painful, you can know that you have a Father in heaven who loves you and who is working out even the most atrocious hardships in your life for your good (Romans 8:28). His heart is for you, and he does not let you suffer because he doesn’t love you (Psalm 56:9). Some of your suffering may be the direct result of his great love for you.
The Wilderness Season Will End
The wilderness years came to a close for Israel after 40 years. They came to a close for Jesus after 40 days. For us who trust in Jesus, our ultimate wilderness will end when we join him in the true Promised Land–The New Heavens and the New Earth (Isaiah 35; Isaiah 65:17-25). Still, by God’s grace he has expiration dates for many of the trials we suffer in this life, though those seasons of suffering may be prolonged (1 Peter 5:10).
Whether you are in the wilderness season or coming out of it with joy, remember all the way God has led you, how he afflicted you not out of anger or displeasure, but necessarily as a loving Father who longs for your soul to prosper. Remember how he tended to your soul, how he provided for your needs day-by-day, and how his mercies miraculously sustained you. Remember the wilderness as a place of God’s loving and intentional work to do you good.
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (1 Peter 5:10 NIV)