11/21/2025
November 21
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”
Psalms 42:1-2 NKJV
Daughter, at times I will send you into the wilderness, into a dry and barren place. My Spirit will lead you into a desolate wasteland. Though you are tempted to turn back, to return to what is comfortable, and to what you have always known, this is not the time to retreat. This is a time to yield to the new thing I desire to do within you. As such the journey through the wilderness is necessary. Notice that I said to you that it is my Spirit who takes you by the hand and brings you into the barren land. This is the in between, the land in the middle of where you have been and where you are going. The middle ground of waiting, that is meant to increase your reliance and trust on and in me. A place where your hunger is intense and thirst is great. Often it is a time of frustration because you cannot see at all where I am bringing you and you have no inclination of why I have brought you to such a place. The wilderness is meant also to reveal what is in within you in the place you have been, and to break off what cannot go with you to the place you are going. As you languish in this place, you become increasingly aware that I alone can satisfy. All else is as a mirage in a desert. At first glance it appears to contain sustenance that would satisfy your parched soul. But as you get closer and closer, you realize it was only a deception, disguised as a promise, and what you thought would satisfy your thirst, disappears like a fleeting thought, like chaff in the wind. There your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth and your skin clings to your bones. Your soul cries aloud for the Living God. As a deer pants for the water brooks, so your soul pants for me. Consider the Israelites, I brought them out of slavery and immediately into the wilderness. There I sustained them with bread from heaven and water from the rock. They encountered me as provider day by day. The wilderness for them was the space between where they came from (slavery) and where they were going (the promised land). This time was appointed for them to gain a deeper dependency on me. Consider Elijah’s journey into the wilderness, where he longed for even death itself. He was fleeing for his life after Queen Jezebel threatened him, and found himself immediately in the wilderness. Overwhelmed and exhausted, feeling all his efforts to serve me were in vain. This experience allowed him opportunity to not only encounter my ministering angels, supernatural provision, but also where he learned to hear and recognize my still small voice. This also was the middle ground between where he had come from (Beersheba- a place of patriarchal significance and the same place Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had divine encounters with me) and the place he was going (first Mount Horeb- which means dryness or desolation, on his way to Israel) The middle ground for Elijah was the cave inside the mountain, where he discovered my voice in a way that forever changed his relationship with me; this barren encounter was a place that marked him. Here I passed by Elijah in a great wind, but I was not in the wind; after the wind, an earthquake, but I was not in the earthquake; after the earthquake, a fire, but I was not in the fire; and after the fire, a still small voice. A gentle and subtle whisper, in the dryest of places, where Elijah discovered my voice. Again and again, you will see in this theme in my Word. The wilderness is a place of revelation and divine encounters that forever mark you. It is a place of refining and preparation and a place where you discover me in capacities that you had previously only dreamt of. This is why I tell you waters will burst forth in the wilderness, streams in the desert, rivers in the desolate heights, fountains in the valleys, and springs of water in the dry land; I am the Living Water that meets you in these places. And there in the barren place, I pave a highway, which is the journey from where you have been and where you are going, and I call it the highway of holiness.
Written By: Megan Owens
Credit Given: Holy Spirit