Oceans in the Desert

By Kathi Pelton

We often experiencing a type of spiritual warfare or wrestle as we finish one year and prepare to enter another. For some the end of a year can cause you to feel gratitude and a sense of accomplishment but for others they may feel an overwhelming sense of failure, regrets, condemnation, fear, or other issues that cause their souls pain. This can lead to the feelings of being separated from the unconditional love of God— though we know that this will never be true. Some of you may be wrestling with a sense of great spiritual hunger that leaves you longing for deeper realms of intimacy with God, requiring further surrender and yielding to the Spirit in ways that feel unfamiliar and uncertain— even unknown regarding how to do it.

If you are one of those who are wrestling, the feelings you are experiencing might feel overwhelming and too intense to engage in. But, be assured that the wrestle is worth the reward! It may cause temporary or momentary pain–it may even cause confusion– but as you wrestle down the defenses in your soul that have become barriers to the deeper experience of oneness with Christ, it will be the best fight you will ever lose! This wrestle is not about winning, it is about surrender and overcoming the pull that the world (the enemy/sin/distraction) has had on your soul.

When Christ is forged and formed in you, He will overthrow other things have occupied your life and attention— taking up space within your heart.

Often these things are so familiar and comfortable that they cause blind spots in your spiritual lives. Then a time will come when undesirable circumstances arrive and crash against the shores of false beliefs, lies and distractions that have occupied significant space in your life. This becomes the threshold to enter into the wrestle— the wrestle to see Jesus formed in you in a way that transforms your life.

The enemy does not want greater surrender or refinement in your life, and he really does not want deep intimacy and oneness with Christ forged in you. He knows that the more yielded you are to Jesus, the more light that you will reveal to all around you— a light that will dispel the darkness he sent to blind and deceive the world.

The new year may be your doorway into occupying land within your life for the Kingdom of God to be established. The Spirit of the Lord is preparing many by occupying further territory in His people’s lives. This requires each of us to war against strongholds that the enemy has held in our lives. To wrestle these places down we all must face the fears that have fortified these strongholds. We must battle down false securities, idols, and comforts that we’ve carried like a child’s security blanket. We may be beinf asked to leave behind childish things so that the enemy has no place in us as we are sent to take back lives and land for the Kingdom. God will exhange Immaturity for spiritual and emotional maturity. Maturity doesnt just happen, it requires deliberate partnership and participation with God and trusted people who are in your life.

The ways of the Holy One are upside-down and backwards to the ways of man or the ways of human reasoning. Therefore when you begin to enter the ways of God, you will experience a type of spiritual and emotional vertigo. This vertigo can cause us to try to regain balance through old ways and by relying on strongholds that have caused you to feel in control. It is vital that you begin to be still and allow the Spirit to reorient and train you to the be aligned to atmosphere of His ways and His kingdom.

This is not a time to back down or to run ahead, but rather to wrestle down the flight-mode of discomforts that accompany change and transformation. This threshold that you are standing at is a time to fight, not to flight.

Fight for stillness, fight for surrender, fight for yieldedness, and fight to see Christ formed in you! Or wrestle might be the more appropriate choice of words.

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.” Colossians‬ ‭1:27-29‬

‭2024 can be an open door year for you— an open door that leads you into purity, holiness, maturity, greater love, freedom, joy and peace. You may have a wrestle at the threshold of this open door but the wrestle will be worth the eternal reward!

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