Marshmellows in the Wilderness!

The wilderness is one of my favourite places. It's spacious wildness provides solitude and sensory richness beyond words. It's a place of unique spiritual connection with the bush and its inhabitants and, through this connection, to worship the Creator of such magnificence. We all need wilderness experiences, a stripping bare of the soul and times of introspection and reassessment far away from the bustle of life in the fast lane.

Life has wilderness experiences that are not of our choosing! They are thrust upon us and our comfortable worlds like unwelcome intruders. How we handle these times depends largely on our attitude and our belief system. For me, as a child of God and my loving Father, it's not about survival skills...hanging in by the skin of your teeth...barely coping. It is rather about abundant living...restoring all that is of lasting value...digging deep creatively...greater reliance...greater dependency on our Father who knows us more intimately than anyone else. It's truly living life to the full, on the edge yes, but step by step trusting in His perfect timing and living in excited anticipation of the next part of the trail. Scary? Yes of course! Desperate? To be honest... many moments of desperate cries for understanding. Abandoned? Never!

There are times when we don't see any rhyme in our life. That's because you're in the middle of the verse. If you're in circumstances that you don't understand, you may be just two words away from a rhyme. Only you can't see that right now.

We will continue to react out of self-pity and negativity when life dishes up lemons until we realise the one all-important truth: If my life is truly under the control of the Almighty God, then my future is in His hands and He most definitely has a plan. And whatever "setback" I face is part of that plan!

Failures are not final. God's plan is bigger than our failures. Our failures are not bigger than His plan! If you are seeking Him, you are not on the shelf, and your best days are not behind you. The best days are ahead of you. Your life is not futile.

When you are in the depths, and the pressure of hopelessness and despair is crushing you, there are four things you must do to make sense out of your life:

• You cry out
• You wait
• You watch
• You hope

Waiting is tough! It goes against our nature. But waiting is a big part of life on the trail that winds through the years. The problem with waiting is that when we wait, we think that nothing is happening. The truth is that if we are waiting on God, all kinds of things are happening. We just can't see what He's doing because we're submerged in the depths.

When you're in the depths and waiting,, don't forget to watch for the goodness of God.
When you're in over your head, you're going to fight hopelessness now and then. The only way to beat it is to immerse yourself in the Word of God.....allow His promises, encouragement and hope to lift you and provide new strength and perspective. Only the Word of God can fill your tank with the daily supply of high-octane hope that will keep you going as you wait for God to work and bring you out of the depths.

If you're never in the depths, you can never find the pearls!....When you surface  from the depths, you won't be empty-handed. God has something for you in the depths that you never could find on the surface.

Faith is a refusal to panic!

When those feelings of anxiety and fear suddently have us in their grip, we can remember that faith is a refusal to panic. Whatever the situation, no matter how deep or threatening it is, I don't have to panic because I know that the Shepherd has everything under His complete control. Knowing that is the antidote to panic.

Are you resting, or are you panicking? Are you worshiping, or are you worrying? You can't worship and worry at the same time. The antidote to worry is worship of the Great Shepherd. Worship always brings rest and refreshment.

With acknowledgment to Steve Farrar and his book "Gettin' There"