The Wilderness - Pt 3

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5 ESV).

The second theory explaining these “wilderness” experiences is known by some as the Formational Furnace Theory. It is closely related to the Boot Camp Theory suggesting that the heat of the desert and the severe pressures of loneliness, hunger, and temptation operated as a furnace that further forged Jesus’ character. The writer of the Hebrews says that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered” (cf. Hebrews 5:8). And, perhaps our own character like plastic, metal, or even cake batter needs to be molded in a formative furnace. My picture today is a Bundt cake. Don’t laugh. How could anything so innocuous as this illustrate anything so devastating as the circumstances of life known as the wilderness? Well, I did a little research… surprise! Did you know there are thousands of web sites, references, and videos just to teach a person how to keep a Bundt cake from sticking to the pan? One used both text and pictures detailing the ten steps necessary to keep the batter from sticking to the pan once it was done. It ended with the following summary: If your cake doesn’t look like it’ll release, here’s a trick. If you have a steamer, apply steam to the exterior of the pan to help loosen the cake. If you don’t, place a kitchen towel in your sink and pour boiling water over it until it’s soaked and steaming. Remove your cake from the oven and place on top of the towel and let it sit and steam for about 10 minutes. If your cake really doesn’t look like it’ll release, try freezing it until hard then invert it. Let me just state the obvious in context of our discussion. If I’m the cake batter, won’t I be glad to have been finally taken out of the 350 degree oven where I have baked for 30 minutes. Stick to the pan or not, I don’t want to be steamed or frozen! I’m done. Can’t I just be left alone? And, that’s how I often feel in my wilderness. However, the apostle Paul agrees with James that suffering produces perseverance, and he builds upon this idea, noting that perseverance produces character (vv. 3-5). That still doesn’t bring me a lot of comfort, unless I recognize that God is not principally concerned with anything but my good. I might be willing to settle for the absence of pain; however, God is doing something far greater in my life than that. He is forming me to His perfect design which will ultimately end in glory. I never need settle for a broken cake!