This session we continue in our series “Fighting Your Battles” by Jonathan Evans. This week we look at our battles from a different perspective.

• Following God doesn’t necessarily protect us from life’s struggles. We have to spend some time in the dry places, because those dry times build a stronger faith, preparing us for the promised land where God is taking us.
• When we’re feeling dehydrated and like we’ve reached our limit, it’s normal to doubt what God is doing and whether He’s on our side. Desperate seasons remind us of our delivering God. We won’t ever get where He’s leading us without exercising faith in Him.
• In the place He’s called you is the place where He’ll be standing right above you.
• There’s a difference between trial and temptation. Though we will sometimes have more trial—more weight and hardship—put on us than we can bear, God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. He promises to always provide a way of escape.

Those painful, difficult places that we’ve followed God to are the places He will provide for us in. He never abandons those who are following Him. But we have to seek Him as our source and provision.

Quotables

• There’s a whole lot of pain, a whole lot of burn, just to get prepared for what we were called to do.
• God will pull you into a place that you don’t prefer because He wants to make sure that you are ready for that promise.
• ​Right when God’s people were at the precipice of losing faith, as soon as they were about to lose it all, God stepped in and He let them know that He’s above it all. God stepped in, put His hands on the weight bar, and started to pull it up to let them know: “Your struggle is not yours alone.”

Jonathan notes that the Israelites in Exodus 17 were faithfully following God; nevertheless, He called them to camp (to rest and reinvigorate) in a place with no water. Desert times like these almost always stir up doubt and fear, and can sometimes make us want to give up on God. Two of the questions that almost every spiritually dehydrated person asks are, “Why did You bring me here, God, when I was following You?” and “Are You with me or not?”

Jonathan notes that the Israelites in Exodus 17 were faithfully following God; nevertheless, He called them to camp (to rest and reinvigorate) in a place with no water. Desert times like these almost always stir up doubt and fear, and can sometimes make us want to give up on God. Two of the questions that almost every spiritually dehydrated person asks are,

“Why did You bring me here, God, when I was following You?” and “Are You with me or not?”

Another time in their trek toward the promised land, God’s people responded like this:

The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The sons of Israel said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread until we were full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this entire assembly with hunger!”… Moses said, “…The LORD hears your grumblings which you grumble against Him. And what are we? Your grumblings are not against us but against the LORD.” (Exodus 16:2-3, 8)

What are some of the accusations the people were really voicing about God?

In the video, Jonathan refers to 2 Corinthians 1:8-10, which the apostle Paul wrote in a very transparent letter to the Christians in Corinth.

⁸ For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. – 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 ESV

If Paul—who had endured beatings, imprisonment, mob attacks, hunger, and other hardships and persecution—could feel such despair, what does this tell you about what to expect of your own emotions in times like these?

Reread verses 9 and 10. What was it that allowed Paul to look beyond his emotions?

Comparing the Israelites’ response and Paul’s, where is the line between expressing our feelings and grumbling against God?

What does our time in the “wilderness” do for our faith? From your own experiences and accounts that you’ve read in the Bible, why does the Lord sometimes lead faithful people into difficulty?

What things do we learn about ourselves in these moments that we aren’t likely to learn anywhere else?

What do we learn about God in these seasons that we aren’t likely to learn anywhere else?

Evans, Jonathan. Fighting Your Battles Workbook: Every Christian’s Playbook for Victory (p. 22). Harvest House Publishers. Kindle Edition.