One of my favorite biblical people is John the Baptizer. There was a wildness about him that appeals to me. He was a rebel, a nonconformist. He was a wild eyed, bug eating, bearded, wild man.
He really was born to be wild.
In fact, in Mark chapter one, it says that “John the Baptizer appeared in the wild”.
There is something about “the wild” that speaks to me.
Then a few verses later in the same chapter, Jesus shows up. He is baptized by John and then the Holy Spirit came down and filled Him up, how’s that for wild!?
Then, it says “at once, this same spirit pushed Jesus out in the wild.”
The Spirit empowers Him and THEN instantly pushes Him into the wild!?
Why?
Why the wild?
What happens in the wild?
Why is time in the wild important?
The wild is the place of “un”. It is uncultivated, undomesticated, unscripted.
It’s in the wild places that we are undone.
That’s scary because the wilderness is, well, wild. The wild is weird. It’s full of unknown and uncontrollable.
We need the wilderness.
Grace seldom grows in sanitized environments, it’s not needed there. It shows up in the wild places.
Wild stuff happens in the wilderness.
The children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They had been freed, but, It took four decades of wildness to get rid of the sludge of slavery. They had to learn to live free. In the wildness, they learned to trust, depend, believe, hope, and really live.
They needed the wilderness.
We need the wilderness.
The wildness exposes the subtle ways we have become slaves to the system and wrong thinking.
In the wildness we are taken back to the basics, in the absence of OTHER things, God becomes the ONLY thing.
We need the wilderness.
The wildness exposes the tameness.
It unleashes the wild in us, and drives out fear and timidity.
We need the wilderness.
In order to walk IN wholeness, we have to walk THROUGH wildness.
We try to run from it, we run to the known and comfortable.
But the “same spirit” keeps pushing us into the wild.
Because THAT is where the shackles fall.
We are born in slavery. We are slaves to sin, self, and system.
We need the wilderness.
That is where we are freed from slave thinking and slave ways.
That is where we learn to live, love and lean.
That is where we become a free people.
If you haven’t, go ahead and answer the call of the wild, it’s the only road to freedom.
And now, let the wild rumpus start!
carbonated joy 