Ps 78:33. "Therefore their days He consumed in futility, and their years in fear." That's about the children of Israel in the wilderness. But it's about a lot of my life too, maybe yours?

For me, it's about the day I left the little Christian school in Kentucky for a “real” job in Chicago. Restless. Visionary. Big plans in Chicago. Mission agencies I would join or create. A teaching career that would "legitimize" my gift. After all, doesn't "real" education happen only in the Public Schools?

May He forgive me and use me in my latter days. That teaching career never really got off the ground, though I hung on to a position for 20 plus years. And, you will not probably get much of a response should you enquire among Chicago's church about one Bob Faulkner. Did a lot of stuff. Lot of motion. But, a lot of futility. And even a lot of fear.

Was I wandering in the wilderness? Such a man of unbelief and low character that it took the Lord 22 years (to date) of futility and fear to suggest the message that His Kingdom is His Kingdom, and it will be built His way in His time by His chosen ones? Or simply an extended education, to purify and refine the little fruit that had begun to grow in Kentucky? God only knows.

Here is a telling recent journal entry that I share with you to exemplify the kind of searching I have done through the years, in hopes that it will resonate with someone else who searches today...

"Talked with the Lord, then a thought crystallizes. The question is, am I now at the Jordan River?

"There seems to be no question that CPS [my job], 21 years, has been the wilderness. Barren, seemingly empty days, little of life to give joy. (Not none, just little). As has been taught to me lately, and truly, Canaan is not Heaven! Canaan is your destiny here and needs to be fought for and conquered.

"The Jordan is a small river. Doesn’t take long to cross. Takes faith and much of it. On the other side are giants waiting to eat us up. It is scary to contemplate. Poverty, sickness, failure, death, shame. But each step of the way we are led into battle by our Joshua. If we obey His commands.

"Question. Do we enter our destiny when we finally want to with all of our heart, or must we wait until our Jordan dries up and lets us cross? Is Jordan always crossable by faith, or only at a certain time? If I cross now, am I like those Israelites who went ahead of the crowd and got killed and defeated, since God had already said, stay in the wilderness 40 years?

"How does a man know he is at the Jordan and only needs to step into the water, and when he is nothing but a rebel who will die in that Jordan or shortly afterwards?

"For me, crossing the Jordan is quitting my job, which cuts our income to poverty level, then going down to ________, and starting to live my dream, which involves ministry of various sorts. I have been at this point many times, but have never crossed over because of the giants, and what I perceived to be a 'closed door.'

"Lord Jesus, may I cross over today? If not, when? When you say cross, I will cross.

"Later in the day I reexamined the Jordan analogy and found in Hebrews that the rest which we are promised is not exactly the same as the destiny being preached today. Is the Promised land simply our life in Christ or is it a fulfilled calling/dream? For me, today, it is the latter."

I am out now, from that career, from those seemingly meaningless days and nights. And today a Caleb-like mountain looms before us. We are asking God for that mountain, and believing we shall have it.

But this story never ends until we arrive at that final "Jordan".