Combat Boots: The Neglected Armor

In Part 1 of Empowered for the Times, we saw Jesus’ encounter at the temple when He was 12 years old. After that, He spent another 18 years preparing Himself in scripture, prayer, and fellowship with His Father.

When He was 30 years old, He came to be baptized by John. He was anointed with the Holy Spirit, who immediately drove Him into isolation in the wilderness. What for? To be tempted by the devil. What? You mean we must be tempted in order to be prepared? Yes, testing is definitely part of the preparation process. But must we be by ourselves? Alone? In the wilderness? 

Think about it. When you took a test in high school, did your teacher allow you to continue to visit and share with everyone else? No—you had to bear responsibility for your own test. Likewise, in your wilderness experience, though it may feel like it, you are not alone. 

Also, James chapter one exhorts us to count it all joy when we fall into temptation, that the trial of our faith works patience and to let patience then work in us to perfect and mature us, so we need nothing. This is because it has prepared us for what is coming in God’s plan for us. James definitely does not say if we face trials, he says when. 

Finally, after this last experience, Jesus, after being totally isolated and tested 40 days, emerged from the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. He was at last completely prepared, having His feet fully shod and ready to take the Kingdom to the people. So, if it was requisite for Jesus Himself to be isolated, prepared, and tested for basically thirty years and forty days, how much more necessary for us?

First Peter 2:21 informs us that Jesus left us an example that we should follow in His footsteps.

It may be well noted here that throughout His whole ministry in the gospels, Jesus continued to isolate Himself—whether to the wilderness or the mountain, sometimes all night long—in order to be alone, fellowship with the Father, and get Himself refilled. All the preparation that He went through He continued to maintain.

Now that He was fully prepared, but before He could actually go to the cross, it was necessary that He accomplish two more objectives:

First, preach and demonstrate the Kingdom of God.

Second, thoroughly teach and train those who would continue this work with the same power and authority in which He operated. 

Thus, He began the three and a half years of intense discipling of His followers. Similarly, Paul, after he was saved, spent three years at Damascus being prepared by God.

Comfort Zone

Here’s the thing. We as human beings, living a natural life in this world, prefer to gravitate ourselves toward comfort. We prefer to be in the places where we feel familiar and safe. But the required change in our lives is not comfortable. 

Life makes us comfortable in our known environment, getting to know certain friends and resources we can trust. Because so much of our trust (or faith) can be placed in these things, it often becomes necessary to remove these comforts for God to elevate us to the level needed to accomplish the job to which He has called us. The goal, of course, is to have implicit trust in Him alone as our source. Therein lies the miraculous, which will indeed be requisite in our mission.

At times, necessary isolation can feel just like abandonment; but, as someone once said, “Separation is often the first step to elevation.” It is a separation from distractions that keep us from trusting Him alone. 

We will be able to reveal this pattern in the lives of several of God’s chosen people throughout the Scriptures. 

Preparation of Moses

In Acts chapter 7, the Bible states that it came into Moses’ heart to visit his people (vs. 23). Verse 25 informs us that he expected his brothers would have understood that he was sent by God to deliver them. But they did not get it. So, when Moses killed the Egyptian, he actually jumped the gun. God had not prepared the hearts of the people to receive Moses yet.

Now, we all have opinions so, here is mine. God told Abraham when He made covenant with him that Israel would be in captivity 400 years (Genesis 15:13). Exodus 12:41 says that they actually came out 430 years to the day. Moses, at age 40, jumped out early (by 10 years) when he killed this man. 

Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (in other words, he was full of himself and the world), and mighty in words and deeds by the strength of the flesh. But God hadn’t called him to his mission yet; he called him to prepare. So, possibly, God had to put him in the wilderness an extra 30 years to wean the world out.

And so, Moses, all full of himself and arrogant enough to kill an Egyptian, was driven out to the back side of the desert—much like Jesus was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit. And like David later on, Moses kept the sheep for Jethro for the next 40 years. 

It took that time of preparation for God to bring remarkable change to Moses. By the time he met the Lord on the mountain and God called him, he had been turned into another man. In fact, according to Numbers 12:3 Moses had become the most humble man on the face of the earth. 

It even affected his physical body, because when he was 120 years old his eye was not dim, nor his natural force or strength abated (Deuteronomy 34:7). Not only that, but verse ten tells us that there never arose another prophet since Moses who knew the Lord face to face. 

None of this could have happened without the time of preparation in the wilderness with the Lord and the sheep. 

Continued in Part 3