When You Find Yourself in a Spiritual Wilderness
contributed by Berry Hudson
When You Find Yourself in a Spiritual Wilderness
Our surroundings have a big impact on us.
When I was setting up our counseling office, I wanted to make sure the space was calm, quiet, and comfortable. It needed to communicate a sense of peace—a place that allowed people to talk about things that are sometimes very difficult.
I wanted the surroundings to send a message:
“This is a good place to say what is important.”
As I write this, I’m about 100 yards from a large home improvement warehouse. It’s always busy with people investing time and money in the paint, shrubs, flooring, and countless other things that make up the spaces where they live.
We communicate a lot through the spaces and places that matter most to us.
That got me thinking about another kind of place: the (desert) wilderness.
Throughout Scripture, the wilderness is where God's people repeatedly find themselves at critical moments. Israel enters the wilderness after the exodus. David finds refuge there when Saul pursues him. John the Baptist lives and ministers there. Jesus withdraws to solitary places to pray.
Why?
Why would God repeatedly bring His people into a place that is dry, exposed, dangerous, and unable to provide the resources they need?
Perhaps the wilderness itself is part of the message.
What Is the Wilderness in the Bible?
The biblical wilderness was not simply a scenic desert.
Two Old Testament words that are translated as "desert' and "wilderness" help us understand the idea. Midbar refers to open, uncultivated land—wide spaces without the settlements, crops, and resources found in populated areas. Arabah describes dry, infertile land, a place that could feel empty and disorienting.
The wilderness was a place where you could easily lose your bearings.
There were few landmarks. Little shelter. Limited food and water. Few places to hide.
It was a place of exposure and need.
That makes the biblical pattern striking.
God repeatedly meets His people there.
Why Does God Bring Us Into the Wilderness?
The wilderness gives physical expression to a spiritual reality:
We are dependent on God.
In ordinary life, it's easy to forget this.
We have homes, bank accounts, schedules, relationships, routines, medicine, technology, plans, and people we can call when something goes wrong. These are good gifts, but they can also make our dependence on God less visible to us.
Then something happens.
A diagnosis changes everything.
A marriage becomes painfully strained.
A child makes choices you cannot control.
A relationship ends.
A ministry becomes overwhelming.
A future you had carefully planned suddenly disappears.
You find yourself in circumstances you cannot fix.
In moments like these, life can begin to feel like a wilderness.
And the wilderness exposes something that was true all along:
We were never meant to be self-sufficient.
Jesus says it plainly: “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
We may know that verse intellectually. But suffering can move that truth from our heads into our lived experience.
The Wilderness Reveals Our Need
One of the painful gifts of suffering is that it exposes our limitations.
We discover that we cannot control everything.
We cannot protect everyone we love.
We cannot guarantee the outcomes we want.
We cannot manufacture our own peace.
And we cannot make ourselves independent of God.
That can feel frightening.
But it can also become an invitation.
The wilderness can become a place where we learn to receive what we cannot provide for ourselves.
God provides.
God protects.
God sustains.
God meets us.
This doesn't mean that every painful circumstance is something we should simply accept without action. Scripture gives us many examples of God's people crying out, fleeing danger, seeking help, confronting injustice, and asking God to change their circumstances.
But underneath all of those responses is a deeper reality:
We need God whether our circumstances change or not.
God Meets His People in Their Weakness
Being dependent on God doesn't mean being worthless or incapable.
God created human beings in His image. He gives His people strength to endure tremendous difficulty.
But biblical strength is not the same thing as self-sufficiency.
Paul discovered this through his own suffering. When he pleaded with God to remove his “thorn in the flesh,” the answer he received was not immediate relief.
Instead, Christ said:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
— 2 Corinthians 12:9
That is a radically different way of understanding weakness.
Weakness is not necessarily evidence that God has abandoned you.
Sometimes weakness is precisely where we discover something about God's grace that we could not have learned otherwise.
Paul eventually says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Not because weakness itself is good.
Not because suffering doesn't matter.
But because weakness can become the place where Christ's strength becomes especially precious.
What Does God Do in a Spiritual Wilderness?
When you're suffering, it is tempting to make one question your only question:
“How do I get out?”
Sometimes that's an appropriate question. We should seek wise help, take responsible action, pursue reconciliation where possible, protect those who are vulnerable, and make changes when change is needed.
But there is another question worth asking:
“What is God inviting me to know and experience about Him here?”
The wilderness can become a place where we learn:
that God is more trustworthy than our circumstances;
that we are more dependent than we imagined;
that His presence matters more than our sense of control;
that His grace is sufficient for today's needs;
that suffering does not mean God has stopped caring;
that Christ meets us in our weakness.
These aren't easy lessons.
And they shouldn't be offered as quick explanations to someone who is hurting.
A person in the wilderness often needs someone willing to enter that place with them—to listen, to understand, to weep, to pray, and to help them see the presence and promises of Christ in the middle of their suffering.
The goal isn't simply to give someone an explanation for their pain.
It is to help them know the God who meets them in it.
When the Wilderness Feels Like God Is Far Away
One of the hardest things about a wilderness season is that God can seem absent.
The circumstances are loud.
God may seem quiet.
You pray, but nothing appears to change.
You ask for direction, but the path remains unclear.
You want relief, but the wilderness continues.
Yet Scripture repeatedly shows us that God's presence is not measured by how easy life feels.
Israel's wilderness journey was not evidence that God had abandoned them. David's time in the wilderness was not outside God's purposes. Jesus' time in the wilderness was not a sign of His Father's absence.
The wilderness can be a place of profound encounter with God precisely because it strips away some of the things we ordinarily rely upon.
The wilderness may feel empty, but it is not necessarily God-empty.
Let the Wilderness Be a Cue
So, what should you do when you find yourself in a spiritual wilderness?
Let it be a cue.
Not a cue to pretend that everything is fine.
Not a cue to minimize your suffering.
Not a cue to tell yourself that you simply need more faith.
Instead, let it be a cue to turn toward God.
Bring Him your fear.
Bring Him your confusion.
Bring Him your anger.
Bring Him your unanswered questions.
Bring Him your weakness.
And then listen for what Scripture says about who He is.
The wilderness may expose how little control you have. But it can also expose something far more important:
You were never meant to live independently of God.
You were designed for dependence.
And the God who calls you to depend on Him is not distant from your suffering. In Christ, He has entered into the brokenness of this world. He knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to be weak. He knows what it is to cry out to the Father.
So when you find yourself in a wilderness, don't assume that God has left you there alone.
Look for Him.
Trust Him.
Receive His grace for today.
And allow the wilderness to become—not merely a place you want to escape—but a place where you learn more deeply what it means to live by the strength and presence of Christ.