Oasis In The Desert
How To Navigate Through Hard Times
Some days are a breeze. We see few problems and everything is as it should be. Other days it feels like we’re in the arid desert, just trying to make it through one lousy minute after the next. What if it’s possible to carry a mobile oasis with you wherever you go? Like a picnic basket, packed and ready to go for those desert moments?
In the book of Lamentations, which are the loud-cryings of the prophet Jeremiah, we find the secret to having an oasis of refreshment, always ready to invigorate us. Yes, in the midst of his desert experience described in detail in the book of Lamentations, he unpacks a refreshing spring. It’s not physical water, but it quenches the inner thirst. It’s a passage found in Lamentations 3:24–26.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
At first reading we may not see the depth of this verse. It may sound like someone trying to cheer themselves up. Fair enough. But when we read it carefully, we can unpack the refreshment that he experienced for ourselves.
Conscious Self-Talk
Our minds are constantly commenting on what we see and hear. We see or hear something and immediately we think something about it, and most of the time we catastrophize. Someone may say they have to talk to us about something, and immediately we think they are upset with us. Unmanaged self-talk is what gets us into lots of trouble.
“By being aware of what you are saying to yourself (your self-talk) you can “stop the out-of-control downward spiral of your life.”
Dallas Demmitt PH.D.
Even though Jeremiah sees how his people shamefully betray their covenant with God, and how they reject him for speaking God’s word, he manages to say something different to himself. He says, “I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion therefore I will wait for him.”
I have a habit of speaking negatively to myself, commenting on what I hear and see going on around me. If someone is too loud for my taste and getting on my nerves, I say to myself, “blah, blah, blah, shut up!” I figure it’s a way of blowing off some steam. I keep it to myself and only I hear my inner dialogue, so I think. But in reality, I’m only giving voice to my old nature, which is self-centered and self-serving.
The Bible says we are new creatures in Christ, but by my self-talk, I realized I was breathing life into my old self, resuscitating that mean, insulting, arrogant individual I used to be.
If we were to put a recording machine to all our self-talk, would it reflect the new nature or the old nature? The new nature is full of faith, hope, and love, grounded in heaven not earth. The old nature is self-seeking, mean spirited, and “deceitfully wicked,” as stated in Jeremiah 17:9. So I decided to watch every word in my self-talk and make sure Jesus is included.
If I catch myself giving voice to the old nature I immediately say, “Lord Jesus, please help me!” I turn the negative thought into a prayer that will further establish that I’m a new creature in Christ. I don’t want the old nature back at all costs.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5)
Celebrate God’s Sufficiency
In his self-talk Jeremiah says “the Lord is my portion therefore I will wait for him.” For Jeremiah God was his portion. Literally all may be lost, but that’s okay because God is enough.
These days when we speak of portion, we speak of food. I took a class on healthy eating to help my mom fight diabetes. In the class we learned to portion out our plate. Half the plate goes to low starch veggies, then you break the other half of the plate into two parts. One quarter plate is the protein, like beans and meat. The other quarter is starch, like rice and bread. I think there is a lesson for us as well. Make God the main course of your life and everything else a side dish. Don’t get addicted to the blessings of this life. Those are good but they can’t replace the main course. Like Jeremiah, we must say “The Lord is my portion.”
Imagine a friend invites you to dinner and there are hot fries and fragrant buns. Clearly something is missing. I don’t have to imagine this because it happened to me once. A friend invited my wife and I to dinner and they served split pea soup. I enjoyed it. When they asked if I wanted more I said no because I thought I should save room for the main course. To our surprise that was the meal! We were then served cherry pie for dessert. Sometimes we see God that way. We are not satisfied because we expect something more, not realizing he is the main course.
There are people who are actually bitter towards God because they don’t have some of the blessings this world has to offer. And even if we do attain those blessings, they are still not ours. We don’t own anything, even our own lives. God owns it all.
God wants to be our All in All. That’s why David says in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.” Notice the tone of this verse. It’s celebratory. We are called to sing about the fact that God is indeed enough for us. More than enough.
Seek God Consistently
Our passage goes on to say that,
“The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him;”
Seeking God is not automatic. Our waking hours are full of opportunities to seek God through worship, meditation, reading the Bible, and prayer. How eager are we for those things? Are we intentionally using our time to draw near to God? We need him more than we realize, but many of us are in denial. We think we are sufficient in ourselves. But we must seek God for wisdom, for strength, for peace.
I’ve always been impressed with those who can sleep any where and any time. That’s not me. I need the conditions to be just right to fall asleep. So I thought, what if I can seek God anywhere and anytime in the same way? Is it possible? Rather than wait for the conditions to be just right, what if we seek God morning, noon, and night regardless of the conditions? We all want God’s favor but it requires that we seek him consistently. If we are seeking our own agenda, how is God supposed to bless us?
“The time we don’t want to pray, is when we need to pray the most.” George Verwer
Our lives need to be a constant and unceasing dialogue with God. The Bible says that we are to be “devoted to prayer” and we are to “pray without ceasing.” (see Colossians 4:2 and Thessalonians 5:7) Times of prayer are the oasis we tend to blindly walk by.
We may not “feel” like God is there but those are deceptive thoughts. The verse that comes to mind is, “Here I am, I stand at the door and knock. . .” (Revelations 3:20) Highlight “here I am.” That means, as believers in Christ, at any moment, he is waiting for us to open the door. “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.” (Philippians 4:5)
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and try to get back to sleep but sleep does not come. I try the breathing exercises and muscle relaxation techniques but they don’t always work. So instead I decided to take time to seek God in prayer and meditation. Just contemplating who he is and what he has done for me in Christ is a form of prayer. Rather than chase after sleep I decided to chase after God.
Takeaways
We will all face hard times and desert experiences but the key is carrying your oasis of refreshment with you wherever you go.
Speak to yourself with words of faith. Don’t let your self-talk take you down the wrong road. Negative self-talk is actually a way of reviving your old self, which is why we struggle to live the Christian life.
Celebrate that God is enough for you. He is your main course and everything else is superficial in comparison, including your own dreams and your personal agenda.
Seek God non-stop. Use every waking moment as an opportunity to seek God because he is near. Use prayer, Bible Study, meditation and worship to stay in constant communication with your Heavenly Father. Whenever you don’t feel like praying, admit it to God and you will be back on track because that admission in itself is prayer.
One final thought: Be refreshed!
