Episode #201 Surviving Wilderness Seasons with Scott Savage – What’s Going On?!

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to Good God Talks. I'm so excited for today's episode because we have a guest host today.

It's my friend, Scott Savage. Scott is a pastor and an author and a speaker with a fantastic last name. As a seasoned millennial pastor, he's served in a variety of roles in church ministry over the past 20 years, and he currently leads Cornerstone Church in Prescott, Arizona. His writing has been read by over a million people in a variety of platforms, and I'm so excited for what Scott has to share with us today as we close out our series, what's going on. So without further ado, I'm going to pass the mic over to him.

Hi, my name is Scott and I'm a pastor, author, and speaker. And it is my pleasure to be a guest today on Good God Talks.

I have spent a large part of my life in seasons that I would call a wilderness. Those are seasons that are difficult. They're challenging. You didn't choose them. You feel overwhelmed. You're forced to wrestle with difficult questions. And generally you come out the other side different.

Those moments are recorded all throughout scripture, but they've also been present in my life. And I'm sure they've been present in your own.

When I think about my wilderness experiences. I think about when my wife and I almost lost our twins at 18 months old, and she went through five months of bed rest.

I think about when my dad, a pastor, had a stalker for 18 months when I was a kid. I think about. going through burnout and battling anxiety and panic attacks and pastoring through a pandemic and seeing 40% of our church leave. I mean, just so many hard and difficult seasons.

And in those seasons, like you, I began to develop adjectives to describe God and his work in my life.

And mine were really honest.

I use phrases like annoying, aggravating, frustrating, jerk, confusing. God didn't make sense to me in those moments, but over time, I've also added a four-letter word to describe God's activity in my life in the wilderness. Now, don't worry. It's not a word that's going to get bleeped out of the podcast.

My kids and your kids are not going to yell from the back of the room, “language.” No, the four-letter word is surprising. It's the word “kind.”

You see, in each of my wilderness experiences, I look back and I see the kindness of God. You see, when I was in those wilderness experiences, I didn't find God speaking to me harshly, condemningly, with shame or discouragement. I found God speaking like I read about in Hosea, where God says to Hosea,

“Therefore, I'm going to persuade her. [I'm going to] lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14 CSB)

Now, the “her” in this passage is the people of Israel, and God is going to allow the people to go into the wilderness.

In fact, he's going to kind of lead them there. Not so that he can let them have it. Not so that he can read them a riot act or rip them a new one. But so that he can speak tenderly to them. So that he can speak to them in a way that matches the environment, because wilderness has the tendency and the potential to strip us bare. To take away all the things we once leaned on for identity, support, structure. Wilderness leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We find ourselves not living with pride but humbled. And in that place, we can hear God speak in a unique way.

And like God spoke to Elijah when he was on Mount Sinai, God often speaks in the wilderness through a still, small voice. And as we look for his involvement in our lives, we find him at work in ways where he's showing incredible kindness to us. Like in Romans 2, where Paul says,

“Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4 CSB)

So this week, as you're talking to God, I want to invite you to ask God a question:

God, would you show me where you are being kind to me?

God, would you open my eyes and my ears and my heart to become aware of the ways where you are being kind to me by what you're doing and what you're not doing? By what you're allowing and what you're not allowing? God, would you help me, even as I look back in the past, maybe the recent past or the distant past, see all the ways and places you've been kind to me?

I often pray using a tool called the Prayer of Examine. E X A M E N. There's a rubric and structure you walk through to reflect on a day or a week or a season to look for God's involvement.

And when I use Examine, what I find is that when I look back, God has been kind to me in ways that I had overlooked. He was kind to me to answer a prayer differently than I prayed. He was being kind to me by showing up in a way that I would have never asked for or anticipated.

And so my prayer for you this week, as you talk to God is that you would ask him to show you his kindness and that you would be prepared to see it, even if it doesn't match your expectation or surprises you. I pray that you would experience God the way that people of Israel did in Hosea, that in the wilderness, God would speak tenderly to you. And you'd experience him in a powerful and undeniable way.

Friends, I know you are as encouraged as I am from this episode. Also, Scott has generously put together some free resources specifically for good God talks listeners.

He has a resource called Don't Give Up When It's Time to Quit, as well as two of his YouVersion Bible plans on navigating the wilderness. You can get all of those for free by going to the link here in the show notes, scottsavagelive.com/GoodGodTalks. Thanks again for joining us and as always, have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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