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Desert of Sin and our journey through the desert
Hello again. I hope you are enjoying the articles Victor and I are writing. I'm writing this article now because God encouraged me with our last book confirming that what Victor and I wrote was within God's will. This leads me to believe if we write more about God, it also will be in God's will. So Victor and I want to write as many books about God as we can before we die and go to Heaven to be praised by God and receive Heavenly treasures. If you want to have a great reward waiting for you in Heaven, you just need to follow what God wants for you in your life. And that is to be as good and loving to others as you can. Some people also get blessed on Earth, but not all people who will be blessed in Heaven will receive great blessings on Earth. All we can control on Earth is our will and desire to help others(if physically capable). If our entire life is in fight mode to help others, and we receive no major blessings on Earth, that is still an honorable way to live. In fact staying disciplined, resisting sin and working hard to help others is what we should always be doing regardless of our situation. If our situation seems bad, that is even more reason to be in fight mode to help others because that is similar to the "Desert of Sin" and how the Israelites didn't honor God correctly. This is what this article is all about. We're going to look at the analogy between one's personal journey with God, and the Israelites' Exodus from slavery into the promised land.
I view the Bible as literal, but is so much more. A lot of great sermons have been told on things implied by scripture and not directly talked on. If you know how to read into scripture, you can learn great truths about life and God's mind. You don't have to read a great deal of scripture to know that the last thing you want is to be on God's bad side. And at the same time, if you value your enjoyment of life, you want to be strongly on God's good side. So one of the most important things you can do in life is to try and learn how you can avoid God's bad side and get onto God's good side. That being said,"God loves us all, and if you repent of sin and come to God, you're instantly back on God's good side." You can remain on God's good side temporarily or you can remain there forever, it is up to you. If you choose to reject sin, evil, and instead do good to all, then Jesus saved you, you get to hang out in Heaven. If you lapse back into sin through weakness, but keep trying to resist sin, you're set too. The people who should be concerned with God's wrath are those who reject him and choose to do evil instead of following God's ways.
Let us look at how cosmically logical the need for Jesus is. Let us say God let everyone into Heaven to do anything they wished. Some beings would hurt other beings. This would not be Heaven at all then. Let us say God the Father himself was judge. God the Father would be a perfect judge for his knowledge knows all, but someone could bring up the excuse,"You don't know how hard it is to avoid sin X, so you should pardon me" Well Jesus was tempted to the highest possibility of temptation in all things and he came out resisting sin perfectly. Jesus knows how hard it is to avoid sin, and as such no one can complain to him that any specific sin was too daunting. Now whether Jesus or Father rules Heaven isn't changing things but the need for one of them to rule is necessary. If someone in Heaven does something to cause another being grief, and there is a case brought before God, God can sort it out and make both parties happy. This means you do get perfect justice in Heaven. Justice in Heaven is so perfect that people who had a hard time in life will get added blessings in Heaven to make up for things. Life is fair. You just don't get see the side of the equation that is in Heaven for you because we can't see into Heaven. Without a Heavenly ruler, there would be no one to break up and diffuse arguments. This means Heaven could not be Heaven without Jesus or Father reigning.
Everyone knows you're supposed to accept Jesus, repent of sin, and do good. Let me just harp on this a little more. Let us examine the LORD's prayer. There are variations on this, but for the most part, it goes the same way. Before I pray this prayer, I'll first have a minor prayer here that people reading this document who don't know Jesus might think of following him such that they can get eternal life. I know my joy of knowing I have eternal life is great. I don't have to worry about maximizing my time on Earth for fun because I know there will be eternity for fun. I don't have to worry about death because I know I get to see my loved ones again. My joy of knowing God is real begins with knowing life never ends. And it is my prayer that maybe you grab onto that joy and internalize it like I do. So the LORD's prayer goes like this,"Our Father, who art in Heaven (God is in Heaven), hallowed be thy name (give honor to God always), thy kingdom come(we want God's kingdom to be brought down into Earth), thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven (God's will is for the best of all mankind and is laden with love for all and love for individuals) Give us our day our daily bread(We need food to survive, spiritually and substantially). Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors(when we sin to other people, we should also forgive those who sin against us, or we're hypocrites). And lead us not into temptation(Temptation is not a good thing. Temptation is sin. If you want pleasure, you can later pray, bring me pleasure God. Temptation is not pleasure, temptation leads you into sin and Death's embrace. It is best to just tell God to have us avoid temptation instead of being daring and saying you want tested to show you can avoid sin.), but deliver us from evil (No one should want evil in their life). For thine(Jehova,Father) is the kingdom (We need God to rule) and the power (God has all power and we bless him for it) and the glory forever(if anything is to be glorified at all, God should be the first and most glorified thing)" Amen! Amen! Amen! It is good to pray before the Lord's prayer everything you want from God, so you're not asking for things during the prayer. The LORD's prayer is a request for God to rule. We request things from God, but ultimately we shouldn't get things that wreck the world. Bruce Almighty was a pretty good movie from this standpoint. If you give a man ultimate power, everything would just descend into chaos. But if God manages everything, you can ask him for anything you desire that isn't sinful, and you might get it! God's will be done. Strong people in faith even say,"God's will be done, even if it is not in my best interest, but instead for the kingdom."
This brings us to the main point of the article. Even if you're on God's good side, accept Jesus and you do good to others, this does not mean your life becomes easy mode. Actually what is most common when people come to Jesus is that their life becomes harder, but more rewarding. The Israelites went through three phases before they got to the promised land. First the Israelites were enslaved. Next the Israelites were led by God, but were not enjoying it for it was tough. Finally the Israelites get to the promised land. These three phases are typically what a believer goes through. First the believer is enslaved by sin until they come to Jesus. John 8:34 GNT Jesus said to them, "I am telling you the truth: everyone who sins is a slave of sin. Next they are led by God and are supposed to be gracious towards God even if things aren't easy(desert of sin). Finally they get to the promised land where God is blessing them. Now not every believer gets a promised land on this Earth, but every believer has a promised land in Heaven. My goal is to just let people know God is real, and to bring them to Jesus. Everyone's suffering through the "desert of sin" is different so I can't really help people a lot here except to point out it is a natural thing!
This article is about the "desert of sin" or the struggle you need to go through when everything is not easy, but at least God is with you. I hope I don't turn you off by looking at my own personal struggle before I generalize things I've gone the desert for years. I want a wife, and I want a house, and I want a job, but I have none of these things. You'd think a graduate from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in scientific computing could get a job coding especially when I am a highly talented computer programmer, but it didn't happen coming out of college. I had one short job in a language I didn't like that didn't have a lot of work for me, but other than that I have had no job. What I do in my spare time is try to code a video game bigger than World of Warcraft all by myself. If I had a 3d artist as dedicated as I am coding, I'd have had a game like Tekken but instead of just 2 players, 500 could play at once. Then if I made money off that, I could work my way into making a 3d fighter MMORPG. It was a course, but it was incredibly difficult since I had no alternative. I sent out thousands of resumes and never got a job through an online headhunter, and only one interview in seven years. I won't pity party on a wife next. I'm just saying it is possible for a man to be full of talent, but HR people to not able to recognize it. Now I'm with a Christian group of guys I met through Twitter, we're doing Flash video games. 2D Flash single player is way easier than 3d MMORPGS, so all the work I did in a hard environment is basically making me into a super programmer. We're looking to publish our first game in just a month or two. Until then, I'm still in the desert in fight mode. It is nice to see an oasis up ahead though. Let us pray it is no mirage. It will be fun linking my game from FatherSpiritSon.com if Victor lets me. :)
Even if my game doesn't make any money, and I have to keep coding, I'll try to keep myself bunkered down in fight mode. God wants me here, or I'd be someplace else. I want to be helping the solution to world hunger by planting fruit trees across the Western Hemisphere where deforestation happened. But since I have no money yet, I can't help. For a while I put too much pressure on myself for being burdened with school loans and credit card debt. But then I realized God is in control, he knows my situation. I can't solve the world's problems all by myself with no money(maybe I can inspire others to through writing?). So I don't think God will judge me because no one wants to hire me as a computer programmer. So I'm at peace. Even though there are problems in the world, I am at peace myself because I'm striving the hardest I can for God. And because God reads my heart and mind, he knows I can't do much more than what I am doing now. Sure sometimes I have times when I'm down and can't fight a strong fight, but I'm hardening myself with blows so I can fight strongly for a long time. My work is like sprinting, but the development time is like a marathon. Part of me wants to sprint the marathon the whole way. When you're in fight mode, and know you're going to be in it for a long time, sometimes you get rewired to keep on keeping on no matter what. It isn't fun, but it is survival. I think we're to do our best in fight mode while we're in the "desert of sin" trying not to make mistakes and ask the wrong things from God.
Let us look at what the Israelites asked the wrong things from God. The Israelites kept mana when they were told not to keep it overnight. The Israelites challenged God for bringing them into the desert and out of slavery that slavery seemed better. The Israelites challenged God for water. The Israelites challenged God for meat when they were hungry. These sins seem easy to fall into if you don't embrace the discipline of accepting what God gives you to work with, and trying your best to make things better in this world for good and love sake. Remember what God did when the Israelites refused to challenge the native sinful people for the promised land? God said that generation will never see the promised land and will stay forever in the desert. In fact the whole length of the journey could have probably been even shorter if everyone was strong and didn't challenge or complain to the LORD during it.
This leads me to the most important part of this article. If things are going tough for you over the course of a long time even a decade or two, keep doing your best, and thank God for what you got. Every big or little thing you have, thank God for. Try and make a blessing list (maybe a text document), and list everything you're blessed for. Try for 10, 100 or even 1000 blessings. I'll share my list someday on FatherSpiritSon.com maybe. So thank God for your blessings, and keep on keepin on. Even if you never make it to the promised land in this life, you'll be able to see God face to face in the next life and tell him you stayed disciplined in this life because you wanted to finally experience his love.
1 Corinthians 9:24 Surely you know that many runners take part in a race, but only one of them wins the prize. Run, then, in such a way as to win the prize. 25 Every athlete in training submits to strict discipline, in order to be crowned with a wreath that will not last; but we do it for one that will last forever. 26 That is why I run straight for the finish line; that is why I am like a boxer who does not waste his punches. 27 I harden my body with blows and bring it under complete control, to keep myself from being disqualified after having called others to the contest.
-Jim Sager