The longer I live, the more convinced I become that there are God designed and defined periods of our life that are carved out with the specific purpose of preparing us. These periods of time can be considered wilderness experiences.
In these wilderness experiences, we encounter spiritual drought, loneliness, and temptation as we learn to deal with our faults and our doubts. We confront our weaknesses in the wilderness, and they eventually make way to strength as more of our flesh is crucified, facilitating growth in our dependence upon the Lord.
In the wilderness, our faith is stretched and as a result, it is enlarged. We come out of the wilderness better people with more faith and ready to accomplish the task at hand until we come to the next wilderness experience where we will, once again, be fine-tuned to traverse another level on our journey as we live in service to the Lord.