By Jill Boman


I climbed into bed, opened my Bible, and poured some lotion into my dry hands. Mindlessly rubbing them together to help the lotion absorb, I scanned the pages and came upon Isaiah 51:3:

“Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody.”

I paused for a moment to bask in what I had just read. At the time I was in the middle of the most difficult trial I had known and felt virtually ruined. Trying to take in the hope and beauty of the verse, I lifted my head and stared towards the window. My gaze fell upon the bottle of lotion I had just used. Beginning to focus, I read the name printed on the bottle: “Desert Essence.” My thoughts ran: “Desert Essence…desert…what did I just read? ‘And her desert like the garden of the Lord’…God, You’re trying to tell me something!”

Do you know how to remember the different spellings of “desert” and “dessert?” We only want to go through the desert once (one “s”), but always want seconds on dessert (two “s”’)! Still, most of us end up walking more than one desert during our lifetime. “Desert” is used for a word picture to describe seasons in life when we feel emotionally and spiritually dry, often the result of enduring a trial. Imagine a person stranded in the middle of a desert. It brings several ideas to mind: being lost, desperate, thirsty, exhausted, despairing… What about glory? You might wonder how glory could possibly come out of a desert, but I believe this is what God was speaking to me about that night. We can be a beautiful fragrance, an incense to the Lord in the midst of a desert experience: a “desert essence.”

Once again, Job provides a fitting illustration. God had permitted Satan to devastate Job’s life, leaving Job feeling, at times, betrayed and abandoned by God. Amazingly, Job maintained his faith, grew closer to God, and even understood Him better by the end of the ordeal. I love the honesty in Job’s words. At one point he said (Job 23:8-10):

“Behold I go forward but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way I take; when He has tried me I shall come forth as gold.”

There is no pretense here. Job was saying, “God, I don’t feel You in my life. I can’t see You—I don’t even know where You are. But You know exactly where I am, and when this whole thing is over I’m going to be shining.” It was an authentic statement of faith. He wasn’t pretending that the situation was better than it really was; his life was terrible at that point. But he chose to cling to hope, believing that God would bring him through. In the middle of his desert God was glorified.

Sometimes the Bible uses running events—races—as an analogy to our lives. Hebrews 12:1-2 says:

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance…and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus…”

I heard a sermon several years ago, in which the pastor elaborated on the idea of our life being like a race. He said that there are times during a long distance race when it doesn’t seem worth it to go on. We can become panicky and out of breath, our muscles may be burning; all the “signals” may be telling us to call it off. But it is by pressing through those times, through the defiance of our bodies, that when we finish the race, the glory comes. Finishing a marathon would mean nothing without the difficulty—it is all about pressing through. This is the reason why the finish line is so glorious. And it is also why God is glorified when we choose to continue walking with Him, especially through our deserts.

Recently I talked with a woman who had been going through a long and difficult desert experience. She told me that she feels guilty when she worships God because even then, she feels miserable. Her statement was a paradox to me. I believe that her worship holds even more weight with God because of her state (though of course anyone striving to remain in a depressed state would be a different issue altogether). She is choosing to worship God, not because she feels good, but because she knows He is worthy—whether she feels good or not. Her praise is a sacrifice and it brings Him tremendous glory. In offering it to Him she becomes a beautiful fragrance—a desert essence.

Many of the hymns that we sing in worship were born out of heart breaking desert experiences. The lyrics of “It is Well with My Soul” came to Horatio Spafford when he sailed over the location where his four daughters drowned, as their ship sank. Joseph Scriven wrote “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” as a poem for his mother after a series of devastating circumstances, the most recent being his fiancé’s death. Thomas Chisholm, who suffered from lifelong health, and subsequent employment and financial difficulties, wrote “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” Other classics that were inspired or written by people who endured considerable hardships include: “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” “Blessed Assurance,” “To God be the Glory,” “Just as I Am,” and “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” Then there are the spirituals, also known as slave, plantation, or jubilee songs that came out of the early African-American church. The glory from all these songs is twofold. God is glorified by the fact that they were written in the midst of trials—they are a “desert essence.” And the glory continues as they bring encouragement and strength to those who sing them now. The authors of these hymns accomplished 1 Corinthians 1:4, which exhorts us to comfort others in affliction “with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."

Life is not fair. Whoever said that life is fair? It wasn’t God. His grace is not the only “force” active in our world—though it is the greatest of all, which will be discussed in part 5. Out of His love for mankind, He chose to give us free wills. With our wills we can make either righteous or sinful decisions, and so can other people (often to our disadvantage). Sin is a real force in the world, released by the poor choices of Adam and Eve—and a myriad of negative effects along with it. Satan is also active, seeking our demise, influencing us further to live our lives apart from God and to give in to sin. This brings us to another way that God is glorified in our deserts: He is glorified when we quit blaming Him. Certainly, God can intervene on our behalf to reduce or prevent suffering—He can do whatever He chooses because He is God! But consider: if He always intervened, how would anyone grow in character and maturity or learn to be Christ’s hands in a hurting world? If sin had no natural consequences, what motivation would we have to repent or resist its influence?

I don’t mean to step on the theological toes of people holding to certain perspectives, but I believe that Scripture supports the idea that God is not personally responsible for everything that occurs in our lives. At one point God told the nation of Israel (Isaiah 54:15), “If anyone fiercely assails you it will not be from Me.” The understanding is that fierce assailing could, and would in this instance, come from other sources. Even Job’s circumstance was not caused directly by God. We read in the first chapter of Job that although God permitted the damage, it was Satan’s idea to begin with. In the limits God places on him (Job 1:12), it is understood that Satan is the one who masterminded and carried out the destruction.

What about the grave sin that was occurring in Sodom and Gomorrah? I imagine that many people suffered as a result of the situation there. Did God cause that? In Genesis 18:21 God announced, “I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.” He couldn’t possibly have caused it if He had to go and find out—no one could rightly blame God for the sin, or the suffering it caused, in Sodom and Gomorrah. He Himself was so horrified and angry about it that He destroyed the cities (Genesis 19:24, 25). This makes sense when we remember that God does not tempt anyone to sin (James 1:13). According to these passages, isn’t it possible that God is not only innocent of the pain caused from sin in the world, but that He is even more grieved about it than we are?

So what is God’s response to our suffering? Where is He when we are crying out to Him in pain? “He does not forget the cry of the afflicted,” (Psalm 9:12) and “The Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). There is something about suffering people that grabs His attention and causes Him to rush to them. Even if the suffering is caused by our own sin, God generously provides for us when we turn to Him (1 John 1:9): “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Taking it even further, He promises to make good come out of bad for those who put their hope in Him (Romans 8:28): “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God…”

Not every occurrence is good, but He does promise to take every circumstance, even the worst imaginable, and work it together for good to those who love Him. Do you love Him? Then you need to realize that He will work everything in your life for good! Choosing to believe this promise brings Him glory. I love this statement, from the testimony I mentioned in part two, regarding the faithfulness of God: “Sometimes you have to hold on to that with your fingernails. But it’s true—not because I believe it, but because God said it. My believing it doesn’t make it true or false, but I can reap the benefits of what God has done if I’m willing to apply my faith.”

The second part of this series was about the advantages that the process of walking through challenges can bring to us. God is glorified when we submit to His working in our hearts and lives during difficult times. We become able to move forward and gain something of value from our trials when we transition from asking God “Why?” to asking Him “What?” As the characters Frodo and Gandolf articulated so beautifully in the movie, The Fellowship of the Ring:

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandolf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Nobody likes the idea of walking through a desert. Still, it becomes a reality for all of us at some point in our lives. I have joked with friends that as long as they are miserable, they might as well get some mileage out of it! But there is truth to that. If we are willing, God will not waste anything that we experience. By choosing to believe in His faithfulness and goodness, pressing on, not blaming Him, and submitting to His work in us, we become a God-glorifying desert essence. At the end of our race, we will find the “great cloud of witnesses” going wild, cheering us across the finish line. And as we look upon ourselves, we will wonder at the radiance.