A Prayer for When You are in the Desert
By: Jennifer Kennedy Dean
The LORD your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the LORD your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing. - Deuteronomy 2:7
As we see in this verse, God shows us who He is by what He does. We see His promises worked out in the lives of His people and know that the same God is working in our lives.
When we are in the middle of a desert trek, God’s hand seems absent, blinded as we are by the glaring circumstances. But when we emerge from that leg of the journey, we can look back and see that God has watched over our every step. The journey was hard and went on longer than we thought we could bear. But here we stand. All the way through the desert, just when we thought we couldn’t last another day, God’s mercy met us in some observable way: a kind word, an unexpected provision, or a “chance” encounter. The assurance of His presence always came.
The desert has things to teach us. We learn things there that we can’t learn anywhere else. We see the careful provision of our Father in a different light. His love stands out in stark relief against the background of the desert’s barren landscape. In the wilderness, we come to the end of ourselves. We learn in new and deeper ways to cling to Him and wait for Him. When we come out of the desert, the desert lessons stay with us. We take them with us into the next stretch. We remember the God who led us through the desert, and we know that He is with us still.
Desert times are fruitful times. Though they seem barren, lush fruit is being produced in our lives when we walk through the desert. The Lord will sanctify your desert times and make them to be fruitful in your life.
Let’s Pray
Dear Lord, I know that wherever I am, You are with me—guiding, protecting, providing. You make a mountain into a way; You make streams flow in the desert; You cause a root to grow out of dry ground. Thank You for giving me the opportunity to see You work when all hope seems lost.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Editor’s Note: Content taken from the Girlfriends in God devotional, Fruitful Desert, written by Jennifer Kennedy Dean. You can read that piece in full here.
Editor's Note: We're proud to announce we've just launched a new nighttime companion to Your Daily Prayer: the Your Nightly Prayer devotional. You'll soon be able to subscribe to receive Your Nightly Prayer via email, or as a podcast, but for now you can find it on the website at crosswalk.com/devotionals/your-nightly-prayer. We hope it's a relaxing and soothing way to wind down your day with rich meditations on who God is.
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