The Wilderness Comes Right After the Prophecy, Not Before (Alternate Recording)

Sermon outline

After the anointing and the prophecy comes the wilderness, where every calling faces the bread test, the vision test and the power test; pass them by keeping your eyes on the promise rather than the present, and instead of trying to get back to where you were, start a new fire with God.

1. After the prophecy comes the wilderness

   Jesus was baptised, the Spirit descended, the Father spoke over Him, and then the Spirit led Him into the wilderness. When God confirms a calling on us, the first thing that follows is the wilderness: uncultivated, uninhabited, inhospitable, a position of disfavour with no clear prospects, no special treatment and no destination, only a word from the Lord. For Jesus it lasted forty days; for us it can be forty months or many years. This is the pattern God uses to try and prepare us.

   “This is the pattern that God uses to try us, to test us, to prepare us for where He wants us to go.”

   • Luke 3:21-22
   • Luke 4:1-2

2. The bread test: the needs test

   Jesus was already hungry and weak in body when the devil told Him to turn stone into bread. When we lack something while sensing a calling, we start asking whether God can really provide a salary, fuel, our family's future, and we look to the people we could connect with. These questions are normal, but the walk of faith is believing in what you do not see. Your eyes should be on God, not things, and on the promise rather than positions.

   Illustration: Parents tell their children to do well at school so they can study, get a good job and provide for themselves. That is a natural promise; the walk of faith follows a different one.

   “A walk of faith means that we should keep our eye on the promise rather than the present.”

   • Luke 4:3-4

3. The vision test

   The devil offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would worship him. This is where a calling can be derailed, especially now that social media shows us everyone else's success in real time and we start copying their principles and networking for fame. The world peddles works; with God it is always about the promise and the kingdom. Success and prosperity are by-products of the promise. Because God's gifts come without repentance, we are responsible for them, so do not neglect the gift. Ministry must never be an alternative when a job gets hard, and there are no shortcuts: the devil left Jesus only for a season.

   Illustration: For about seventeen or eighteen years he has been in full-time ministry. Before that he ran a business while serving in a church of three people who cleaned the toilets themselves. When he concentrated on the house of God, God brought in the clients and kept the business, the vehicles and everything safe; when he took his hands off the church to focus on the business, he found himself only sustaining it.

   “There is no such thing as a shortcut with God.”

   • Luke 4:5-8
   • Matthew 6:33
   • Romans 11:29
   • 1 Timothy 4:14
   • Luke 4:13

4. The principle and power test

   Set on the pinnacle of the temple, Jesus answered every test with the word, because God never works outside His word. When God calls you and hands are laid on you, the resources of the Spirit are given, but that power is for God's purpose and can never be used to abuse, manipulate or control people with scripture or position, in church, in business or at work. Where a calling starts well and dries up in the test, some turn to other things to get somewhere, and disobedience is as witchcraft.

   Illustration: The extreme examples are those who claim to prophesy what colour underwear you have; it started well, dried up in the testing, and they went looking for something else.

   “Wherever we find ourselves in, whether we're in business, whether we're in secular employment, whether we are in the church, that power is there for God's purpose, not for your purpose.”

   • Luke 4:9-12

5. If you do not know your calling, start with the Great Commission

   If you do not know where you belong, start with the Great Commission in the house where you came to Christ: get involved, submit to authority, and in that training ground you will find which glove fits. If the church is not doing something you want to do, come and say so. Many are called but few are chosen because few like the test and the trial, yet that is the key to the promise. The church needs the skills your secular work has given you.

   Illustration: He found more joy, peace and fulfilment cleaning the toilets at church than running his business.

   “The only time I will truly find that fulfillment is when I am doing the work of the Lord.”

   • Matthew 28:18-20
   • Matthew 22:14

6. The mind of Christ in the test

   Do not be selfish or try to impress others; take the attitude Christ had. Though He was God, He humbled Himself, took the position of a slave and was obedient to death on a cross, and God gave Him the name above every name. However hungry He was, His mind stayed fixed on His duty to reconcile people to God.

   “Let this mind be in you.”

   • Philippians 2:3-11

7. With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible

   It is impossible to serve God without Him. His own family is the proof: his mother, the daughter of a Muslim cleric who disowned her, and his father, the fourth child of a domestic worker who grew up fatherless below the poverty line, now in their twenty-first year of ministry. Many in the church grew up without fathers or support, or suffered abuse, and were written off, yet here they are. God is a lifter and promoter of people, and those who leave all to follow Him receive a hundredfold.

   Illustration: Members who opened their homes for home cells when they could barely keep the lights on or offer a cup of tea saw God pay their bills, set up their children, and move them from taxis to cars, some even to trucks.

   “God is a lifter of people.”

   • Matthew 19:23-26
   • Matthew 19:27-30

8. Do not rekindle an old flame: start a new fire

   Paul counted everything loss for Christ, forgot what was behind and pressed toward the mark of the high calling. If you were once involved and are no longer, stop trying to get back to where you were and start something new with God from the present forward. Forgive yourself, because the blood covers what is past. Give yourself wholly to the reading, the exhortation and the doctrine, and do not neglect the gift. For some that means Bible school, training or getting involved again.

   Illustration: Starting a new fire: putting in the wood, the firelighters, whatever it takes, and fanning it from this day forward.

   “I'm not trying to rekindle an old flame. I'm trying to start a new fire.”

   • Philippians 3:7-14
   • 1 Timothy 4:12-16
   • Hebrews 12:1
   • Colossians 1:27

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