Desire Of My Soul

Soul Remodeling Series: A Wilderness Call [Part 1]

It can feel like you’re walking on a high wire.

Deconstructing . . . for your soul’s reconstruction.

Breaking free from preconceived “factions.”

Becoming Divergent, your unique self in the Lord.

 

© desireofmysoul.faith & SoulBreaths.com. All rights reserved.

 
 

READ TIME: 4 MINUTES.

 

He said, “Go.” But I wondered, “Where? When? For how long?” A shift was in motion. It was palpable, stirring in the pit of my soul, pushing me to the edge of a cliff and onto a high wire across a chasm with no way back.

 

So I waited. Waited for His move that would move me. I stood before Him . . . praying . . . pacing . . . questioning . . . seeking . . . kneeling . . . then standing some more. But He wasn’t “moving” me anywhere. I’d been dropped into no-man’s-land.

 

That doesn’t mean things were stilled. I had become a girl interrupted—on a cliff in a God-designed wilderness. Recently widowed, followed by what felt like an avalanche of even more losses, relationship changes, twists, and turns. Suspended.

 

I was free falling. I couldn’t breathe. My body, yes. My soul, not so much. It was suffocating. I’d lost my tribe in more ways than one and didn’t know where I fit in any more, if any place. And the uneasiness of where else this journey was taking me (soul wise or otherwise) was escalating. I felt like a character in one of my favorite YA movies, Divergent.

 


It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking . . .
instilled in me, like tugging a single thread
from a complex work of embroidery.
—Tris, Divergent by Veronica Roth


 
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
 
 

GOD’S LOVE CALL

 
 

God is in the soul business. And He was moving deep within mine to set it apart for His purpose, taking me off the grid of my life and into a six-year-and-counting process called in Hebrew lech lecha (pronounced lek leh-kah,לֶךְ-לְךָ).

 

Totally à la Abraham in Genesis 12:1 where God told him to leave his land, father’s house, all that he knew to follow God to a new place.

 

A lech lecha journey is God-appointed . . . the soul traverses deeper, going to itself, within itself, and for itself, for a higher purpose.

 

A special period of time God sets apart. On a special journey. A seemingly precarious one. Like getting into an unstable canoe and heading out toward the ocean.

 

Not always a physical move. Not a disciplinary action. It’s a love call.

 

A wooing-from-God wilderness journey
away from the common,
into the holy,
uncovering the soul’s hiddenness.

 

It’s where He does the deepest work in your soul so it can emerge in another level of its potential in Him—a matter of the soul where it becomes its purpose, which is always linked to bringing forth the kingdom of God.

 

He removes any heaviness in your soul that’s hindering its movement . . . anything that’s muffling His voice or words . . . anything that’s blinding the soul from seeing or receiving His visions and revelations.

 

It’s like God is parting the Red Sea inside you. Rabbinic thought says that God peeled back the sea to reveal a mystery. The earth represents the physical, what is visible, tangible. But the hidden under the sea represents the spiritual, what isn’t discerned in the physical and natural.

 

During your soul-remodeling process, God peels your life back. He removes you from what’s been your “natural” way of moving and being to expose what is flowing in those subterranean waters within your soul, within its nuances (breath, spirit, life force/living being).

 

The deconstruction-reconstruction wilderness process doesn’t necessarily occur because you’re steeped in sin and out of alignment . . . although that can happen. The deconstruction-reconstruction process is first and foremost a time when God wants to go deeper and draw you closer.

 

It’s a time where things are stripped away so the soul can get newly positioned with Him, away from the earthbound/world-focused body, making room for what is to come.

 

The process isn’t comfortable or easy. It may seem as if everything you put your hand to doesn’t work. Even if it flowed smoothly before.

 

Losses may surround you—like in finances, personal endeavors, work, relationships, family matters, health issues. The way you and God used to communicate and interact takes a hard right turn—your prayer life, study time, worship time.

 

You may feel . . .
abandoned,
disconnected,
uncertain,
foreign,
not your norm.

 

You might be tempted to see things as rapidly sliding
d
o
w
n
h
i
l
l
without any end in sight.

 

BUT. HANG. ON. He is there with you in the center of it all.

 

There will be flashes of light. Like when you’re walking in the dark during a thunderstorm and lightning momentarily reveals a patch of ground around you, letting you know where to step next.

 

Trust Him. God will flash His light of revelation, understanding, direction during the wilderness journey. Maybe small flashes like a firefly—or greater, like lightning cracking the sky.
 

In time, in bits here and there, you’ll get a glimpse of where your soul is, what’s going on, and what He expects through the deep-work process.

 

And at times, you just might find your unsettling feeling starting to converge with an inner lightning bolt of excitement.

 

You also might start to realize that He is journeying with you for a specific purpose through unchartered territory where your soul will mature, awaken, and soar in unimagined ways. Ways it couldn’t have if you were still living in the old and familiar.

 

What you need is God’s game plan. Yep, He has one.

 

Read about it next: Soul Remodeling: The Wilderness Call, Part 2

 


I throw my arms out to the side and imagine that I am flying . . .
My heart beats so hard it hurts, and I can’t scream and I can’t breathe,
but I also feel everything, every vein, and every fiber, every bone
and every nerve, all awake and buzzing in my body
as if charged with electricity.
I am pure adrenaline.
—Tris,Divergent by Veronica Roth


 

PHOTO CREDIT:

Boat photo by Zoltan Tase on Unsplash.com

 

NOTE: The original Soul Remodeling post was created in late 2014, later post divisions were added for easier reading.

Soul Remodeling Series: A Wilderness Call [Part 2]

More on Part 1’s spiritual high-wire act.
That deconstructing . . . for your soul’s reconstruction.
Breaking free from preconceived “factions”—becoming Divergent, your unique self in the Lord.

 

© desireofmysoul.faith & SoulBreaths.com. All rights reserved.

 

Read this first: Soul Remodeling: A Wilderness Call [Part 1]

 

READ TIME: 4 MINUTES.

 

Ihad walked in His wilderness-called journey before. I knew somewhere along the way there would be recalibrating, a spiritual tightrope strung through His basic process: The love call. The soul’s deconstruction and reconstruction. The emergence.

 

But this time, I felt like there was more at stake on many levels. So I seriously wanted to emerge like the lover in Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) 8:5. “Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?”

 

Stripped, humbled, taught, infused with His presence, transformed by His voice, reconstructed. And resting on Him, even more than before. That’s who she is.

 

Human viewpoint says you have to get tougher, stronger through life’s valleys and potholes. But toughening up solely via your human strength can make you bitter, harder, harsher, louder, colder. Filled with a false sense of power.

 

In the world’s eyes, the beloved in the Song of Songs should have left her wilderness experience like part of the Dauntless faction in Divergent—bulging muscles, ninja-like skills, kicking some downright serious butt along the way.

 

Thanks, God. Got it. I’ll take it from here.

 

Not even. That would mean her soul was disengaged from Him. Flowing in its own words, standards, strength, darkness.

 

God says that in your weakness, He is made strong. It’s His strength flowing through your soul that you need to rely on—not yours. When you’re humbled before Him, He lifts you up.

 

So look again at that Song of Solomon 8:5 scripture. She spends time in her soul’s wilderness with her beloved and comes up out of that desert experience. Her soul ascends from where it was, what it was.

 

How? Leaning on Him. L-e-a-n-i-n-g.

 

Her soul is no longer rushing ahead in its own strength, own ways, own timing. Nor is it dragging behind Him, fearful, shivering in a corner, not taking any action. Instead, there is a deeper rapport with Him, soul to soul.

 

Remember that when He gives you a come-to-the-wilderness call.

 

Your soul is breathed from Him (from the Hebrew word neshama, breath) . . .

 

Your soul is given the capacity to flow and move with Him (from the Hebrew word ruach, spirit/wind) . . .

 

Your soul is called to rest (from the Hebrew words nefesh and nafash, rested breath) in its bodily journey down here . . . surrendered, obedient, in love with Him. Him, your very breath, your very life.

 

God wants to flow from His throne to and through your opened, connected, humbled soul.

 

 

SHATTERED, BUT EMERGING WHOLE

 

Midway in my multi-year soul reconstruction process, I had questioned God about my wilderness journey. Well, actually, I had questioned Him at the beginning, middle, and just about every place along the way. But I digress.

 

The point is, I felt like I was buried beneath mounds of snow. Forgotten. Useless. Then in His kindness, God gave me this vision as His answer.

 

An image of an arrow flashed before me.
It was notched and rested in the bow’s string, then pulled back.
Way, way back.

 

God was the archer. His faithfulness, the bow. His strategy, the tension. And I was the arrow that had to “rest” in Him through it all.

 

I knew where this was headed. Sort of. It was going to take more shifts. Deep shifts. Intentional shifts. Subterranean work.

 

God likes to hit His target goal—creating something better, greater, eternal within the soul. And that something takes time, precision, and pulling those He loves away from the common and into the holy.

 

Of course, in the process, you can feel more like a broken arrow, shattered into a gazillion pieces like Moses’ tablets—the ones with the commandments inscribed by God that he threw down at the Golden Calf incident.

 

But that shattering can be a good thing.

 


I used to think the Dauntless were fearless.
That is how they seemed, anyway.
But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.
—Tris, Divergent by Veronica Roth


 
 

 
 

MOSES & TWO SETS OF TABLETS

 

According to Talmudic thought, Moses put the new tablets and the shattered tablets into the Ark of the Covenant (Aron HaBrit, אֲרוֹן בְּרִית), the acacia chest overlayed with gold containing a pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, along with the covenantal tablets, Israel’s God-given constitution.

 

The two-sets-of-tablets story stands as a paradoxical lesson.

 

Both sets reflect your soul. Shattered, yet whole.
Broken, yet engraved with the hand of God.

Your soul arises.
Remade.
Standing on its brokenness.
Strengthened by Him.

 

A wilderness walk. A love call off the grid. His glory plan—His time frame, not yours—to refine your soul into His image.

 

READ THESE NEXT: WILDERNESS BIBLE HEROES WHO WERE DECONSTRUCTED, THEN RECONSTRUCTED FOR HIS GLORY.

 

SARAH
from barrenness of soul to prophet—and the world’s matriarch

Read her story here.
 

JOSEPH
favor lost, favor regained—in spite of himself

Read his story here.
 

MOSES
fugitive prince turned bride guardian—who almost missed his calling

Read his story here.
 

JEREMIAH
accidental prophet—cohen priest turned pillar of iron

Read his story here.
 

SAUL OF TARSUS
persecuting zealot turned God’s servant—the famed pharisee some Jews and Christians love to hate

Read his story here.
 
 

PHOTO CREDITS:
 

Flower in Snow photo by Luke Richardson on Unsplash.com

Smashed pottery by Matt Artz on Unsplash.com

 

NOTE: The original Soul Remodeling post was created in late 2014, then later, post divisions were added for easier reading.

 

Journey on