SCT 6: Wilderness is for hearing

by Darren Rusco

Note: I'm working on a book about hearing God's voice. The process of writing is a slog for me, so I decided to work it out through blog posts, hoping that would help me get ideas out to print, and also give readers a chance to feedback and help form the end product.

Chapter 6

Wilderness is for hearing

If you made a list of people in the Bible who really knew God on an intimate level, such as David and Moses, you’d see a common denominator in their lives: a wilderness experience. For a variety of reasons, many people of the Bible found themselves in the wilderness, and do you know what happened in every case? God met them there to speak.

In modern times we often use the metaphor of the wilderness to describe a season of life where God can’t be found. We seek his voice and cannot hear him. These wandering seasons exist, and we will address them in a later chapter. But I propose that God uses the wilderness, both literal and metaphorical, intentionally for speaking to people. The wilderness is indeed difficult, but the voice of the Lord is always there.

What makes the wilderness the wilderness? Overall, it is a geographic place that receives very little rain, causing very little plant and animal life, the very means of sustenance in a place. Therefore, you won’t find many people in the wilderness. It is a lonely place not meant for survival. There is no permanent residence in the wilderness. If you are there, you cannot be there for long. You must get in and get out.

This is why God told the old covenant priests to transfer the sin of the people onto a scapegoat and release that goat into the wilderness. The goat, carrying the sin of the people, would never survive. The sin was gone. And because the goat went to the wilderness, it could not be revisited. God’s people were never meant to see that goat again.

And yet, over and over God uses this setting to speak with his people. God revealed his wilderness purposes in Deuteronomy 8:2-3:

Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness… Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna… He did it to teach you that people don’t live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

God went to exaggerated lengths to show that he wanted their very life survival to be on his voice and not on food. He intentionally took them to a place with no sustenance so the people had no choice but to depend on God’s direction.

This is why I view fasting as an intentional trip to the wilderness. Fasting is not an action to get God’s attention so that we can gain what we want. Fasting strips away one of our main dependencies, food, so that the focus of our heart is on God. In this way, fasting tills the soil of our hearts so that we can receive the seed of God’s revelation. The purpose of fasting then, is to position your spirit to hear God's voice.

According to Matthew 4, the Spirit of God led Jesus into his wilderness experience. It is no coincidence that this wilderness excursion is placed after his baptism with the Holy Spirit and before his ministry season. Like the Israelites of the exodus, Jesus was in the wilderness to be tested and to hear from his father. And, while in the wilderness, Jesus fasted in order to position himself to hear. And of course the devil shows up with a temptation to break the fast by turning a stone into bread. It’s not that the Father banned Jesus from making bread or performing miracles with stones. The problem is this temptation severs the very thing that Jesus is after in the wilderness experience; which is dependence on God through fasting so that he could hear what God was saying. This is why Jesus responds to this temptation in Matthew 4:4:

No! The Scriptures say, “People do not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Jesus quotes the Deuteronomy passage that states God’s wilderness purposes. So why was Jesus in the wilderness? Simply to hear God’s voice.

In Genesis 16 we read the story of Hagar, the servant of Abram and Sarai. In an act of unbelief that would create devastating consequences for millennia, Abram forced Hagar to create a baby with him because he was yet to conceive with his wife Sarai. As a result, Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that Hagar finally ran away into the wilderness for safety.

Whereas the Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness, Hagar was forced into the wilderness. How bad must it have been for her in her master’s camp that the wilderness was the better option? And so it is that many factors can lead us to the wilderness.

But to her surprise, God spoke to her there. He gave her the difficult message to return to the camp and submit to her master, but he also gave her a promise of countless descendents and a new revelation of God’s nature (Genesis 16:13):

Therefore Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.” She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?”

Through his voice, God gave Hagar the sustenance for the coming difficult season. She experienced the literal and metaphorical wilderness.

Later, according to Genesis 21, Abraham would eventually send Hagar and her son Ishmael away permanently. Hagar had to endure a difficult life situation as a result of another man’s sin. Again, she found herself in the wilderness with no hope of survival. And again God showed up with his voice of promise and provision.

Moses killed a man and fled to the wilderness for safety. God showed up and spoke to Moses through the burning bush. Like Hagar, Moses also received a revelation of God’s nature - in this case God’s personal name, “I am who I am.” In the most unlikely of places, Moses’ received new life instructions and was called to be the leader of God’s people. (Exodus 3)

In fear, Elijah fled to the wilderness to protect his life. He registered many complaints to God about the difficulties of his life. But God showed up and spoke to Elijah through the gentle breeze. And like Moses before him, Elijah received new life instructions out in the wilderness. (1 Kings 19).

The wilderness was so important to God that he sent a prophet named John the Baptizer to spend a large amount of time there and received revelation about the Messiah there. In fact, the Jewish people actually had to travel to the wilderness to receive John’s prophetic message and teaching. (Luke 3)

David spent much of his life in the wilderness, in hiding, and the Lord sustained him every time. David received from the Lord in the wilderness resulting in many songs, such as Psalm 63, where the prelude refers to David’s location in the wilderness.

The biblical evidence is strong that the wilderness, literal and metaphorical, is reserved for the voice of God. If you want to grow in hearing God’s voice, you must embrace the wilderness season. If you feel like everything is getting stripped away, pay attention to the coming of God’s voice. He is not going away, he is coming near. He is setting us up to hear, while all too often, our anxiety in the flesh is setting us up to be deaf. If you are in the wilderness because of your own wrongdoing, you are not disqualified from God’s voice, on the contrary, God is there waiting for you! Hear what you need to hear and then get out. Wilderness is meant for a visit, not for permanent residence.

Fasting is for revelation

In 2011, as my family prepared to leave the US and move to Scotland, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me about fasting and its connection to receiving deeper revelation from God. My wife and I were in a fundraising training seminar put on by our organization called Novo Mission. I was a bit overwhelmed by how much money it would take to move our family of five to Europe and to sustain us monthly. I did the math on how many people we would have to approach for giving, and quite frankly, the math seemed impossible to me.

Then the president of Novo, Sam Metcalf, came into the meeting to share his testimony of what God did while he fasted for 40 days. He had a yellow pad of paper and began to read out loud his journaling from the fast. While he was reading, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and told me that before I asked anyone for money, I was to fast to receive our plan of provision from heaven. This was good news and bad news for me. I was so glad God was giving me a financial plan from heaven, but I was scared of fasting. As a pastor, I had tried fasting many times, and never could make it past lunch. Fasting became a major source of guilt, confusion, and despair.

But this was different. I was led by the Spirit to fast. When I got home I started my fast with the expectation that this metaphorical trip to the wilderness would prepare my heart to hear God’s voice. So I got a pad of paper and began to write down everything I thought God was saying.

The first thing I heard had nothing to do with finance. God challenged me to pray bigger. That is, ask for bigger, more miraculous things. And I did. I actually listed three friends who were gone out of my life who I was unable to reach. In the span of five days, all three of those people reached out to me to talk, without me doing anything. In fact, I broke my fast on the fifth day in order to have lunch with one of them.

The next item God showed me was about finance. Before we started the fundraising process, he asked me to give away all of our money we had saved. We had to learn the principle of sowing and reaping from 2 Corinthians 9:6-8:

Remember this - a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. For God loves a person who gives cheerfully. And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.

The secret to receiving is giving first. I had to get God’s version of generosity in my heart. In fact, God dealt with me over jealousy and animosity toward wealthy people. I heard God’s voice say, “Maybe they are wealthy because they are so generous.” We were happy to give away our money, but God told us to give it to a person who bothered me. I actually waited for a few days just to make sure that part of the word was really from God. Those were a quiet few days. So we gave it all away.

After giving away our money, we got our next instructions about fundraising: we were to ask nobody for the money and trust God to bring it all in. This was also good news and bad news. I was happy to not go to all the work of fundraising, but to sit and wait? Would our leaders even allow this?

Enough time has passed since this story occurred, so let me give you the specific details, in order to testify to the miraculous work of God for our family in that season.

My fast began in early July 2011. Prior to this, we believed that God wanted us to move to Scotland in January 2012. So we picked January 15, 2012 as our move date (we ended up moving on January 24). It was our understanding that our mission organization wanted us to be fully fundraised two months before we moved - that would be November 15, 2011. The amount we needed was $7000 of pledged support per month, which was way more money than I had ever made in my life! So on July 15, 2011, we presented these dates and numbers to the Lord: “God, we are asking you to make us fully supported, $7000 per month, four months from now, November 15, so we can move on January 15.” I created a public letter stating what our family was called to do and how people could give toward our mission, but I never asked anyone directly for money. We never stated publicly the information of our prayer, that is, how much we needed per month and when we needed it. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed at how much we needed and how naive it was to think this could happen in four months. It’s normal for missionaries to fundraise for years before they can move.

Our mission org told us we would get most of our support early on because the people who love you will pledge up front. Well that didn’t happen for us. We were off to a very slow start. Meanwhile, in faith of these dates, we had to prepare an international move, sell our belongings, give up our home, sell our cars, pay for dated passports and visa applications, all while not having the financial means to move! We actually had to act ahead of time on these dates. In late October we had to leave for three weeks for training and while away our monthly pledges went up to 70% of the total need. Every time we got a new supporter, I would receive an email. We had people supporting us whom we had never met! This was very encouraging.

November 15 had come quickly and we were not near fully supported. On that morning I prayed with a little embarrassment. Had I misheard God’s voice? Or maybe whatever we currently had would be enough? I sat in my office that morning and my phone began to set off multiple alerts - multiple emails were coming in about new pledges. At first I thought it was a glitch, but no, all of these new people pledged to give on that last day, yet nobody knew this was the last day.

To our surprise, by November 15, 2011 exactly, we received a total of $7000 of monthly pledged donations. Nobody knew that amount or day, and strangely enough, we never received another donor after that day, until in May of the next year, long after we moved, my grandmother passed away, who was one of our supporters. I asked the Lord what to do, and without asking anyone, we got our next new donor that very week. And as another gift from God on November 15, 201l, I got a phone call that afternoon from a stranger wanting to buy my car which had been listed for sale. That same evening she gave me cash and drove off in her new car.

This is not a story of how missionary fundraising should be done. No, God has many ways to accomplish that. This is a story of the fruit of hearing God’s voice, and more than that, of what can happen when you intentionally go to the wilderness to hear even more.

Like the heroes of the Bible, we find the wilderness in many ways. At times God will lead us there, at other times we flee there, at other times we intentionally go there to find God, still, at other times we end up there without even realizing it. Sometimes the wilderness is a camping trip in the solitude while all amenities are stripped away. Sometimes the wilderness is a fast from food or sleep. Sometimes the wilderness is a difficult season of life where God is stripping away your provisions in order for you to depend on him. The wilderness is literal and metaphorical and is foundational to hearing God’s voice. Don’t be afraid to go there.