Adventures’ focus is discipling and equipping a generation to spread the Kingdom across the globe. As Easter approaches, we are taking time to focus on what this season means as we seek to be better disciples of Christ.
Depending on your personal traditions, you may be celebrating the season of Lent. This is a time in the Liturgical calendar when Christians across the world enter a season of fasting and repentance in preparation for Holy Week. Though many of us in Evangelical circles did not grow up with Lent as a yearly practice, there is much we can learn from our more liturgical brothers and sisters.
Lent is reflective of the forty days Jesus spent in the desert. It was in that time of being sent out, tempted by Satan, pushed to the limit in which the Spirit empowered Jesus to overcome, to press in to what the Father was doing, and to walk into the fullness of his ministry.
Throughout the Bible, we see people who are constantly sent on a journey, launched from their comfort zone. Those journeys became a conduit for learning about the heart of God, as a way of becoming exactly who God has created them to be.
Moses was also sent on a journey, although rather than forty days, he was set to wander the desert with the children of Israel for forty years because they were not faithful to God who had just delivered them from slavery in Egypt. It was in the Tent of Meeting that Moses and God conversed about the fate of God’s people and whether or not they would go on without the blessing of the Almighty.
Moses, being righteous and knowing the heart of God, made a bold statement when God said he would not go with them:
“You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people.”
The Lord replied, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:12-16)
There are moments in our lives now when we walk through deserts. It is in those deserts where we can easily be tempted to feel, do, or say things contrary to who God has created us to be. It is also in the deserts, just like the one Moses and the Israelites walked through, we are stripped down, refined, and pruned.
However, if we are unwilling to walk into the desert, we cannot experience the fuller life God has for us.
Moses was unwilling to go where God was not leading him. He was uncompromising in his desire for the presence of God. In every season of life, we should posture ourselves in a place that invites more of God’s presence. We should be unwilling to depart from his presence and be bold enough to ask for more.
Even Jesus had to choose to walk with the Holy Spirit into the desert, to listen to the “GO!”
That is why Adventures in Missions exists, to allow people to answer the “GO!” We know that there is more, we boldly ask for it, and we seek to empower people to step into spaces where they can not only receive from God, but give it away to the world. They chose to live with less so that God can give them more. And that is what this season is all about.
As we make our way towards Easter and Holy Week, “What is God asking me to lay down so that I may pick up what he has for me? Is there a desert, a space of refinement, that God wants to walk me through? Is God calling me to go?
What are you personally doing to press into the fuller life God has for you? How will you celebrate the resurrection of Jesus?
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