Psalm 22:1-5

This psalm begins abruptly, with a disturbing scene: someone who knows and trusts God is forsaken, and cries out to God in agony.

David Guzik

“How do you continue to walk with God when you don’t feel His presence and it feels like He isn’t with you?”

THE WALL.

What is The Wall?

What is important here is to note that the trials we encounter each day are not the Wall or “dark night of the soul.” Trials are traffic jams, annoying bosses, delayed airplay departures, car breakdowns, fevers, and barking dogs in the middle of the night.

Peter Scazzero

JOHN OF THE CROSS PHOTO*

continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Philippians 2:12b-13

Wilderness seasons don’t purify us from sin, Jesus already did that. It’s done. It is finished.

“DARK”

How do we know we are in “the dark night”? Our good feelings of God’s presence evaporate. We feel the door of heaven has been shut as we pray. Darkness, helplessness, weariness, a sense of failure or defeat, barrenness, emptiness, dryness descends upon us. The Christian disciplines  that have served us up to this time “no longer work.” We can’t see what God is doing and we see little visible fruit in our lives.

Peter Scazzero

“NIGHT”

weeping may stay for the night,

    but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

“SOUL"

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
     Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
     and by night, but I find no rest.

Psalm 22:1-2

We're going on a bear hunt

We're going on a bear hunt

I've got my binoculars

I've got my binoculars

I'm not scared

I'm not scared

Ooh, look at that tall, wavy grass

It's so tall

We can't go over it

We can't go under it

We're just gonna have to go through it

Swish, swish, swish, swish

The Kiboomers

“DO I TRUST GOD?”

10 I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:10-14

When we make it through the wall, we no longer have a need to be well known or successful, but to do God’s will. We have now tasted what it means to live in union with the love of God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. 

Peter Scazzero

For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.

Deuteronomy 2:7

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yourself.

Charles Swindoll

Going through “The Wall” helps us un-learn:

1. Pride: They have a tendency to condemn others and become impatient with their faults. They are selective in who can teach them.

1. Avarice: They are discontent with the Spirituality God gives them. They never have enough learning, are always reading many books rather than growing in poverty of spirit  and their interior life.

1. Luxury: They take more pleasure in the spiritual blessings of God rather than God Himself.

1. Wrath: They are easily irritated, lacking sweetness, and have little patience to wait on God.

1. Spiritual Gluttony: They resist the way of the cross and choose pleasures like children do.

1. Spiritual Envy: They feel unhappy when others do well spiritually. They are always comparing.

1. Sloth: They run from that which is hard. Their aim is spiritual sweetness and good feelings.

Going through “The Wall” helps us learn:

1. How to be needy.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

18 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”[d] 19 Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. 20 Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, 21 being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. 

Romans 4:18-21

1. How to be okay with mystery.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

9 

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9 

If you understand, it is not God you understand.

Augustine of Hippo 

The way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped — it requires an active participation in following Jesus as he leads us through sometimes strange and unfamiliar territory, in circumstances that become clear only in the hesitations and questionings, in the pauses and reflections where we engage in prayerful conversation with one another and with him.

Eugene Peterson

1. How to wait for God.

Wait for the Lord;

    be strong and take heart

    and wait for the Lord.

Psalm 27:14

1. How to not be tied down.

 29 This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, 30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who b...