“The cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.”
Joyce Meyer
“Ask anything you want and I will give it to you,” the Lord said during my prayer time at a critical transition in my life.
“Anything? Wow!” I was excited.
“I have to make this one a good one,” I thought to myself. It’s not everyday you feel the Lord come and ask you this.
I thought about it for long time and then gave God my answer.
“I want to have a breakthrough anointing to help your people be set free,” I said.
“And while you’re at it, I want it four times greater than that of a famous Christian speaker that I like,” I said as if I had really went for it big time!
“Immediately God shot back, “Are you willing to pay the cost for that?”
“Cost?” I thought in my mind.
I quickly responded to Him, “Well I thought you said everything was a free gift of God?” I questioned.
My reply to Him did not go over so well and there was silence.
I continued to mull this over and told Him I did not know what the cost was. I felt like I was signing on the dotted line of a contract that I did not know what it stated.
I dropped it that afternoon and let it go
…or so I thought.
“You never answered My question,” I felt the Lord speak to me a week later.
I knew immediately which question He was asking about. After wrestling awhile with Him, I finally gave in and said yes to the cost. I still did not know what this meant, but I was willing to pay it.
I FELT SET UP!
He was the one that came to me and asked me what I wanted. Then He turned it around on me and said there was a cost. Now looking back I have a little better understanding.
Speaker Graham Cooke says it best, “Many will follow another’s anointing, but few will pay the price it took to get there.”
The attitude is, “I do not want to go through what you went through –
to get what you got. I just want you to wave your hands and pray for me and magically the anointing will come upon me.”
Our months or years in the Wilderness is the perfect place that God uses to test us. As we pass our tests in the Wilderness, we die to our selfish desires. Those things that are not benefitting us are dropped to the wayside. It can be painful, but freeing at the same time. There is a cost to being in the Wilderness, but one that is completely worth paying.
The Wilderness leads to a deeper intimacy with the Father than ever before. There is an authentic tangible presence of the Lord, just like the cloud in the desert that led the Children of Israel.
You have been set up!
But God is leading you to a far greater place than you can ever imagine with Him.
Is there a cost? Yes.
But it will be worth everything that you have gone through because of the surpassing intimacy with God will far exceed any of the hard times you faced.
“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.
Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”
Proverbs 4:7 (NIV)
One fateful decision landed me smack in the middle of my own Wilderness…
Though I was obeying God’s voice, I spent the next several years “walking on water,” even though it felt more like I was treading water. A Journey Out of the Wilderness is for people going through a rough time—a Wilderness experience—where you feel as though you are “down for the count” and ready to give up. Wilderness Wanderers feel as though they are doing laps around the mountain, passing the same tree over and over again wondering, “Will this never end?” However, being in the Wilderness will be one of the most transformational times of your life.