Deuteronomy chapter eight.  Not on my list of most encouraging scriptures ever.  At least, it wasn’t until last summer.  Last summer, I actually said to God, “Did you bring us out into this wilderness to let us die here?” because that is how I truly felt.  I went searching for that sentiment, because I knew I had read it before.

It’s what the Israelites said when they were leaving Egypt and came to the Red Sea.  Admittedly, it was a tough place. They looked in front and saw a sea.  Behind them were Pharaoh’s war chariots. “ Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert (wilderness)!”  Exodus 12:14.  God responded to Moses saying, “Why are you crying to me?  Tell the people to go forward!”  Exodus 14:15  I wrote in my journal, “They didn’t understand that going forward into their destiny might be hard, harder than slavery at times.”

After that, things didn’t exactly go peachy did they?  Mt. Sinai, idol-making, plagues, snakes, and then, they were turned back from the Promised Land right when they were on the edge of entering it!  They had to turn around and go back into the wilderness for forty long years.  Does anyone reading this feel like they can relate to this somehow?

Finally, forty years later, a new generation is standing on the edge of destiny.  They are actually going to enter the land, and Deuteronomy chapter eight is Moses’ graduation speech to them if you will.  In it, he outlines the reasons for the wilderness.  I will list them here for you, and then, if you are extra motivated, you can go ahead and read the chapter at the bottom.  I don’t know about you, but this encouraged me when I was in a very low place.  It strengthened me and my resolve to trust God even when I don’t like the process He has me in.

Reasons for the wilderness:

1.  To humble us (v. 2)
2.  To find out what is really in our heart (v. 2)
3.  To find out if we would keep God’s commands (v. 2)
4.  To teach us that He will provide for us, even if the means He uses are unfamiliar and alien to us (v. 3)
5.  To discipline us just like a father disciplines his son that he loves (v. 5)
6.  To keep us from forgetting the Lord as soon as our life becomes more comfortable (vs. 10-14)
7.  To keep us from becoming proud and thinking that we can produce wealth ourselves without the Lord’s power (vs. 15-18)
8.  To do us good in the end (v.16)

8 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. ² Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. ³ He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ⁴ Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. ⁵ Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.

⁶ Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. ⁷ For theLord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; ⁸ a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.

¹⁰ When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. ¹¹ Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. ¹² Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart will become proud and you will forgetthe Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹⁵ He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. ¹⁶ He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. ¹⁷ You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

¹⁹ If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. ²⁰ Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.