I used to think that once I was baptized in water and filled with God’s Holy Spirit, that I would then as a disciple of Jesus be free to preach the gospel, and that everything was going to be amazing. As wonderful as that sounds, it was not my experience. I was free to preach the gospel, but my life was not the blissful smooth sailing I thought it would be. Instead, I found myself experiencing a lot of spiritual warfare, most of which I was not prepared for, and I had to learn to fight spiritual warfare by experience, and not by theory only. But God was there for me in every moment, teaching me, guiding me, equipping me, encouraging me and loving me through it all.

I didn’t fully understand that there is a pattern in Scripture that tells us that after we are born again, we go into a Wilderness period. Jesus is always our pattern, and what He does, we follow in His footsteps. Just as the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the Wilderness immediately after His baptism, we too will be led into the Wilderness after our baptism. Our destination is the Promised Land which God describes as flowing with milk and honey, but in order for us to reach the Promised land, we have to go through the Wilderness.

We see this pattern so clearly with the story of the Israelites. Just as God delivered His people out of Egypt by the hand of Moses, God calls each of us to come out of Egypt (meaning a life of bondage to sin), cross over the Red Sea (which means to get baptized in full immersion of water and be filled with God’s Holy Spirit after repenting of sin), and then move through the Wilderness to get to the Promised Land, or as God helped me understand it – a land of promises.

Then it came to pass, when Pharoah had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea.

Exodus 13:17-18 NKJV

The Wilderness journey is actually a very important part of that journey for all of us, because it is the only way we can grow from spiritual babies in Christ (when we are born again) to full spiritual maturity in Christ. This is also where relationship with the Lord is built.

Jesus is always our pattern, and He came to show us the way. These next 2 scriptures are very important for us to understand the purpose of the wilderness experience, and we learn from our Master. Notice that in the Scripture (Luke 4:1-2) it says that Jesus went into the Wilderness being filled with the Holy Spirit, but in the Scripture which follows (Luke 4:14), it says that He came out of the Wilderness in the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s the point! We too go into the Wilderness filled with God’s Holy Spirit, but we need to come out in the power of the Holy Spirit. Coming out of the Wilderness in the power of the Holy Spirit means that we have grown into mature disciples in Christ, we have overcome the wicked one, God has strengthened us, and that the Word of God abides in us, and best of all, we have a close established relationship with our Father. All of these aspects are very important and will form the basis of these blogs.

Jesus went into the wilderness filled with the Holy Spirit:

Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil.

Luke 4:1-2 NKJV

Jesus came out of the wilderness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee.

Luke 4:14 NKJV

This is the first blog post of many which will follow in the coming weeks. In the next blog post, I will be referring to Scriptures which will help us understand the importance of spiritual food for spiritual growth.

Blessings in Jesus name