Recognizing the Wilderness

It had been a difficult few years.

There had been job-related disappointments. Hopes and dreams deferred time and again. The grief of watching people I love refuse to surrender to the Lord and seeing the impact those choices had on our family. Marital struggles. Uncertainty. Loss. Questions that seemed to have no clear answers.

Like many difficult seasons, it wasn't just one thing.

It was many things.

While we were in the mountains reflecting on the previous decade and seeking the Lord for the year ahead, I had a conversation with my friend back home, Cathy. She is a woman of deep wisdom and spiritual discernment, and what she shared with me that day put words to something I had sensed for a long time but had never fully understood.

She believed the Lord was taking Jason and me through the wilderness.

Not because He was punishing us.

But because He wanted us to surrender.

And if we were going to make it through, we needed to keep our eyes fixed on the mountain of God.

At the time, I wasn't sure what to do with those words.

But I couldn't shake them.

Over the following weeks, I found myself searching the Scriptures, studying the lives of men and women who encountered God in the wilderness.

Hagar.

Jacob.

Joseph.

Moses.

The Israelites.

I wanted to understand why God so often seemed to lead His people through places of waiting, uncertainty, and surrender.

And somewhere along the way, From the Wilderness to the Well was born.

An Unexpected Community

Creating a blog and building a following was never my goal.

I was simply journaling, studying Scripture, and trying to understand what God was doing in my family's life. I was trying to make sense of a season that made very little sense.

This blog became a record of what God was teaching me.

To be honest, I was nervous about publishing that first post. Sharing something so personal felt vulnerable, and I worried about what others might think.

What I didn't expect was what happened next.

I began receiving messages from readers across the country and around the world. Men and women who were walking through wilderness seasons of their own. They shared stories of waiting, loss, disappointment, uncertainty, grief, transition, and unexpected detours.

Though our circumstances were different, a common thread connected us all: the struggle to understand what God is doing when the path ahead isn't clear.

Those conversations reminded me that the wilderness is not a unique experience reserved for a few people in Scripture. It is a place many of us find ourselves at some point in our journey with God.

I thought I was wandering alone.

It turns out there were many fellow travelers on the road.

What the Wilderness Taught Me

Looking back, Cathy was right.

God wasn't punishing us.

He was teaching us to surrender.

He was teaching us to lay down our plans, our timelines, our expectations, and even our dreams.

But an even deeper realization emerged:

The wilderness wasn't simply something to survive.

It was a place where God wanted to meet us.

As I sit here one year later, preparing to write about Moses' encounter with God at Horeb—the mountain of God—I cannot help but think back to that conversation in the North Georgia mountains.

At the time, Cathy's words were difficult to hear.

I wanted answers.

Direction.

Resolution.

Instead, God invited me into surrender.

Over the last year, I have studied the lives of men and women who found themselves in wilderness places.

Hagar.

Jacob.

Joseph.

Elijah.

And now Moses.

What I have discovered is that the wilderness is rarely where we want to be, but it is often where God reveals Himself most clearly.

A year ago, my friend told me to look to the mountain of God.

Today, I find myself writing about Moses standing before a burning bush on that very mountain.

What Moses discovered there is what I have been slowly learning throughout this past year:

God is not absent in the wilderness.

He is already there.

And often, the ground we view as barren becomes holy because of His presence.