The Wilderness Is Where He Begins
There are seasons in life when everything familiar is stripped away.
The places you once called home no longer feel safe. The people you depended on are gone. The dreams you held so tightly seem to dissolve before your eyes, leaving you standing in a barren landscape wondering if God can still see you.
The Scriptures call this place the wilderness.
Before I began studying the Torah through its Hebrew language, culture, and context, I viewed the wilderness as a place of punishment—a place where people wandered because they had failed God.
But as the Holy Spirit began opening my eyes to the Ancient Paths, I discovered something altogether different.
The wilderness has never been the place where God abandons His people. It has always been the place where He introduces Himself.
Led Into the Wilderness
When the children of Israel were delivered from Egypt, they did not immediately enter the Promised Land.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob intentionally led them into a vast and desolate wilderness.
At first glance, it seems like an unnecessary delay.
Why not take the shortest route?
Why not bring them directly into the land flowing with milk and honey?
Yet our Heavenly Father knew something they did not:
Israel had physically left Egypt, but Egypt had not yet left them.
Four hundred years of slavery had shaped the way they thought, the way they feared, and the way they viewed both themselves and God.
Before He could entrust them with their inheritance, He first had to heal the wounds that bondage had carved into their souls.
The wilderness became God’s classroom—a place where He taught them to trust Him one day at a time.
There He fed them with manna from heaven.
He gave them water from the Rock.
He covered them with His presence.
And He established a covenant with them.
The Wildernesses I Did Not Choose
As I look back over my own life, I realize I have walked through many wilderness seasons. I did not choose them.
Some were thrust upon me through childhood abuse, sexual violation, and the harsh words of an angry father who carried wounds of his own.
Others came through abusive relationships, addiction, spiritual abuse, and the heartbreaking losses that no mother ever imagines enduring.
The incarceration of my son…
His death…
Leaving my home, my work, and the sanctuary that had become familiar…
Finding myself living in a place that awakens some of my oldest memories.
More than once, I believed I had finally found solid ground, only to discover that the ground beneath me was shifting once again.
The ground was always shifting under my feet. I couldn’t get a grip on life.
There were days I wondered if I had somehow missed God altogether.
Had I taken a wrong turn?
Had He forgotten me?
Was I destined to wander without ever finding home?
Yet as I continued studying His Word through the lens of Torah, I began to recognize my own story woven throughout the pages of Scripture.
The wilderness is not evidence that God has abandoned His people. It is often evidence that He is preparing them.
God Meets His People in the Wilderness
Throughout the Bible, God repeatedly meets His servants in lonely places.
Moses encountered the burning bush in the wilderness while tending sheep (Exodus 3).
Israel learned to hear the voice of the Lord in the wilderness before entering Canaan (Deuteronomy 8:2–3).
Elijah fled into the wilderness in despair, where God spoke—not through the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in a still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11–13).
Even Yeshua, immediately after His immersion, was led by the Spirit into the wilderness before beginning His earthly ministry (Matthew 4:1).
How different this is from the message the world often teaches.
We assume God is found only on the mountaintop—in success, abundance, comfort, and certainty.
But Scripture tells another story.
The wilderness is where false identities begin to die.
It is where idols are exposed.
It is where the voices of fear, shame, and rejection slowly lose their power.
It is where the Father teaches His children that His presence is enough.
He Met Me Before the Wilderness Ended
As I began to understand this, I also began to understand my own journey.
Yeshua did not wait until I had everything together before He revealed Himself to me.
He met me in the middle of my wilderness—while grief still lingered in my bones.
He met me while anxiety still gripped my body.
He met me while I wrestled with unanswered questions and memories I wished I could forget.
He met me before the wilderness ended.
Just as He met the woman at Jacob’s well, He met me in the dry places of my own soul.
He became Living Water to a heart that had spent decades searching for love, acceptance, and belonging in people, places, and things that could never satisfy.
The wilderness has become something altogether different than I once imagined.
It is no longer merely the place where I have suffered.
It is the place where I have come to know the Father.
It is where He gently untangles the lies I believed about myself.
It is where He breaks the chains that Egypt left wrapped around my heart.
It is where He teaches me to trust His voice above every other voice.
And it is where He reminds me that before He ever brings His children into promise, He first brings them into His presence.
I No Longer Fear the Wilderness
I am still walking through wilderness seasons.
There are still days when the landscape feels barren and uncertain.
But I no longer fear the wilderness the way I once did because I have learned something I could not see before:
The wilderness is not where God leaves His people.
It is where He begins.
Perhaps the wilderness is not always something we need to escape.
Perhaps sometimes it is the very place where the Father is removing what enslaved us, quieting the voices that once defined us, and teaching us to recognize His voice.
Israel could not carry Egypt into the Promised Land.
And sometimes neither can we.
There are things we learned in bondage that cannot follow us into freedom.
There are identities formed through pain that were never given to us by the Father.
There are fears that once helped us survive but were never meant to become the foundation upon which we build our lives.
The wilderness exposes these things.
But it also reveals something far greater:
The faithfulness of the One who walks through it with us.
Remember the Wilderness
Moses told Israel not to forget what God had done during those years:
“Remember that Adonai your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble you and to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
He humbled you and let you hunger, then fed you with manna… that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of Adonai.”
— Deuteronomy 8:2–3
Maybe you are walking through your own wilderness today.
Maybe something familiar has disappeared.
Maybe the ground beneath you feels uncertain.
Maybe you have wondered whether God sees you at all.
The wilderness does not mean He has forgotten where you are.
The same God who led Israel by cloud and fire still knows how to lead His children through places where they cannot see the road ahead.
You may not yet see the Promised Land.
But you can learn to recognize the One who is walking with you through the wilderness.
And perhaps one day, when you look back over the barren landscape you thought would destroy you, you will discover that it was there—in the place you never would have chosen—that you learned who He truly is.
The wilderness is not where He abandoned you.
It may be where He introduced Himself.
Much love…
