Holy Ground: When the Wilderness Becomes Sacred

We serve a God who still performs miracles. While some healings are instant, others are slow and sacred, wrapped in mystery and divine timing.

Click here to listen to this devotional written and narrated by Jen Roland.

Last Sunday, my pastor preached on healing and how God calls us, as believers, to tell others what Jesus has done. I felt convicted.

I had been waiting until I reached the top of the mountain to share my story—until the Lord completed the healing and eliminated the pain, and I had neatly wrapped the testimony. But God is moving now, and I would be remiss if I remained silent about the healing He is already doing.

When the doctors diagnosed me with neuropathy in 2021, my life as I knew it came to a halt. I couldn’t drive, sit, or exercise without burning pain throughout my body. I lived in a state of fear, anxiety, and despair. Doctors told me there was no cure, but believing that leaves no room for God.

We serve a God who still performs miracles. While some healings are instant, others are slow and sacred, wrapped in mystery and divine timing. God has been providing progressive healing for me—body, mind, and soul. It has been slow but holy. Had the pain vanished overnight, I would have missed the profound healing He wanted to offer—the healing that happens in the wilderness.

I found communion with Christ in the pain. In the silence, I heard His voice. I felt His loving embrace amid my fear. There in the wilderness, my Savior held me, and in His arms, I was home.

Jesus went into the wilderness before beginning His ministry. “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness...Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:1,14). Likewise, the Spirit leads us into wilderness seasons to prepare us for our ministry, not to punish us. God uses those barren places to form, refine, and ready us for the purpose He has for us.

The wilderness strips away comfort. It exposes what we’ve depended on—control, approval, self-sufficiency—and asks us to choose: will we seek temporary relief, or will we seek God with our whole heart? “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

Moses went through the wilderness to encounter God in a burning bush, where God had commissioned him for his higher purpose. Jesus went through the wilderness to prepare for His ministry. The wilderness is where God transforms and commissions us, too, through the pain, not despite it.

Don’t fear the wilderness. Being there won’t be the end of your story, but where the crux of your story begins. It’s where prophets get birthed, shepherds take shape, and apostles, teachers, and evangelists prepare.

The wilderness is where God holds us, heals us, and makes us whole, and we gain a deeper level, more intimate knowledge of Him.

The wilderness is a holy ground. God is tender when He speaks to us there, just as He promised: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14). There, in our broken state, He turns our valley of trouble into a door of hope (Hosea 2:15). But first, we must surrender. We must return to our first love.

Comfort can’t be our first love. Healing can’t be our first love. God must be.

Jesus longs for a relationship with you. He wants to fill you with His fullness, to be the Source of living water from which growth and healing will flow (Ephesians 3:19, John 7:38). Just as the cross wasn’t a sign of God’s absence, but His preeminent act of love, the wilderness is evidence of God’s grace because “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3–5). And when His love burns in your bones, you can’t help but proclaim His name to the world (Jeremiah 20:9). Your testimony becomes the living proof of God’s existence and His nearness.

In the wilderness, God sanctifies, sets apart, and purifies us. We learn to trust Him in those dry, desolate places. During the delayed healing and discomfort, God invites us to let go of false idols—ourselves, security, ease—and let Him be all we want and need.

When that refining work is complete—when the Lord has held, healed, and made us whole—He releases us. Like Moses, we emerge from the wilderness, radiating the glory of God. “We do not come with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4). This is how God changes lives and ignites hope. We must live Scripture, not just quote it. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

Have you been avoiding the wilderness? God might ask you to meet Him in the middle of it rather than run from it. He sees your pain, knows your suffering, and is waiting to draw you nearer. Run to God and let Him transform your wilderness into holy ground.

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