Page 68 - The Prosperous Way _ (APRIL 2024 v3)

THE PROSPEROUS WAY

Moses, we also serve. He has introduced Himself by His name and
revealed His character so that we too can know who He is, understand
His ways, and learn why we can trust Him.

THE BACKSIDE OF THE DESERT

Trust comes from the personal experience of someone’s character as
they relate to us. Trust comes from relationship. Do you know how
David, Moses and Joshua came to know and trust God in the way that
they did? It was not among the bustling camp of the Israelites that
Joshua learned to trust God. It was not in Pharaoh’s great palace that
Moses learned to trust God. It was not from within the crowded ranks
of King Saul’s army that David learned to trust God. These men came to
know God in the aloneness of their wilderness experience.

David, like Moses, encountered God on the backside of the desert, in the
isolation of his shepherd's watch (1 Samuel 17: 28 & 34-36); and Joshua
came to know God far outside the camp of the Israelites at the “tent of
meeting” where he continually waited alone in the place where God
dwelled. The other Israelites worshipped from afar, within the
congregation of the camp, but the Scriptures tell us that Joshua never
departed from the tent of meeting (Exodus 33:11). He sought God
where he was to be met in person, in isolation and aloneness, where
the cloud of His presence rested.

For us too, an intimate knowledge of who God is will not be found in
the corporate assembling of the church, although certainly, we will
experience His presence there. But intimacy is really only found in our
own personal experience of God: It is as we seek after Him (in times of
private prayer, in the study of His Word, and in personal worship) that
He slowly begins to reveal Himself to us. It is here that He first begins to
speak to us, and we learn to recognize His voice. We start to respond
and step out in obedience to that voice, one tiny step at a time, first in
small things than in great. It is only as we obey that God can begin to
bless us.

Sometimes we learn to obey His voice through the wisdom of hindsight.
When we have not obeyed God and we see the result of our inaction,
sometimes quite disastrous results, we learn to trust His voice when next
He speaks. We learn that it is our own disobedience that has blocked His
plans to bless us. And we learn for ourselves the meaning of the

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