BLOG/The Wilderness Season: When God Speaks the Loudest

The Wilderness Season: When God Speaks the Loudest

Are you in a time of wilderness? Discover how God turned my worst season into the best thing that ever happened to me.

Did you know there’s a place between promise and fulfilment, between calling and commissioning, where many of God’s people find themselves: the wilderness.

It’s not glamorous. It’s often painful and it can feel deeply isolating. Discover how my worst moment became the best thing that ever happened to me and how time again, we see in Scripture that the wilderness is the very place where God does His deepest work.

My Worst Moment

I thought I had it all. My dream life. Having worked in modelling and TV most my life, I had got to a place where it was very normal to be flown out to incredible places for campaign shoots that would pay me a lot of money to have a lot of fun. I was married to my best friend who was a senior pastor at a local mega church. Had a vibrant community full of people I adored. I was living in my dream London apartment with views out of a Pinterest board. It felt like I’d hit my Happy Ever After era by my mid-twenties.

In what felt like a single moment, everything I held dear seemed to vanish before my eyes. My marriage ended very suddenly and tragically, my work contracts dried up overnight. I lost my dream London apartment and could no longer afford the comfortable lifestyle I was accustomed to. Moving out of town meant I was far from my community. I found myself in the loneliest and quietest place I’d ever been before. It didn’t just feel like a desert; it felt like a nightmare. I found myself wondering where God could possibly be or if he had just forgotten about me all together.

Little did I know this dark night of the soul would become the very best thing to ever happen to me. Because this is where God was able to bring out the very best in me and re-postured my heart back on Him.

What Is a Wilderness Season?

A wilderness season is a time of spiritual testing, refining, or transition. It often doesn’t feel good (from my experience), and some signs can be marked by
Delays or detours.
Feeling spiritually dry or disconnected.
Uncertainty and hiddenness or feeling stripped of comforts and clarity.

You may not know where you’re going, but you can know that you’re not going to be the same as when you began.

God, Where Are You?

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness (Matthew 4:1). Not by accident. Not because He had strayed, but because the wilderness had a purpose.

The wilderness isn’t punishment. It’s preparation, and preparation often precedes a promotion. It also often happens in obscurity.

It’s where Moses unlearned the identity of an Egyptian prince and met the God of the burning bush. Where David, anointed but not yet crowned, learned how to lead not from a throne, but from caves. The desert is where Jesus overcame temptation, anchoring His ministry not in applause but in obedience.

1. The Wilderness Reveals What You Truly Believe

When everything else is stripped away, what remains? Sometimes God uses discomfort to expose the idols we’ve unknowingly clung to. Anything that we choose over God, we’ve made an idol. During my wilderness season, I had to realise that I had a weakness to prioritise relationships over God and hit the hard reality that false idols will always disappoint us! But God never will.

In the wilderness, we can no longer fake it. Our theology becomes raw and we have to face if we really trust God when He’s silent. Do we believe He’s good when provision is scarce and we don’t feel Him or see His favour?

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness… to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.” -Deuteronomy 8:2 

2. The Wilderness Teaches Surrender

Brokenness often comes before Breakthrough. The key is having the humility to surrender to a God that prunes to take you higher.

The wilderness takes us to the end of ourselves, not to destroy us, but to teach us full dependence on God.

It’s in the lack that we learn to say: “Give us this day our daily bread.” It’s in the waiting that we learn to worship, not for outcomes, but for who God is.

3. The Wilderness Prepares You

Portions Podcast reminds us that The Wilderness is a powerful place! The word ‘midbar’ which is the hebrew root of the word ‘wildnerness’, literally translates to ‘speak’. The wilderness is the place God speaks and often calls you to a greater purpose. The calling of God is never cheap. It often requires us to surrender and allow God to take us up higher. But be encouraged that what God prepares you for privately, He will use you for publicly. Joseph’s palace dream had to go through pits and prisons first.

The wilderness is where your character is built to be strong enough to carry your assignment. If you try to skip it, you will collapse under the weight of the calling.

4. The Wilderness Isn’t Forever

There is an end. God doesn’t abandon you in the wilderness; He walks with you through it.

Like Elijah under the broom tree, exhausted and hopeless, God didn’t rebuke him. He sent angels to feed him and told him to rest. Even in the silence, He is speaking. Even in the waiting, He is working.

“Even though I walk through the valley… You are with me.”

–Psalm 23:4

5. God Brings Beauty Out of Barren Places

The wilderness becomes a womb for revival. What if this dry place isn’t where God left you, but where He lured you? Not to punish you, but to romance your heart again?

“Therefore, I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.”

-Hosea 2:14

Final Thoughts: A Cocoon or a Desert?

If you’re in a wilderness season today, take heart. You are in good company. Some of God’s most powerful servants were forged in the hidden place.

The hardest part I found in my wilderness season was the solitude, but then I realised that solitude is silence, not stillness. That just because my fruit didn’t appear to be growing, God was growing my roots deep and strong in Him. It got to the point where I didn’t want my wilderness season to end. This desert was where I felt God speak to me the most. Being hidden in Him was the safest and most beautiful place I could be.

Turns out I wasn’t lost; I was being led. I wasn’t forgotten; I was being formed. I don’t see the wilderness as a dry desert, but more as a cocoon where God does His best work.

If you’re in this season right now, may you hear His whisper. May you encounter His presence. And may you emerge not only changed, but truly prepared for what you’re stepping into. You may not know what this next chapter holds, but you can trust the author.

For more encouragement see Portions Podcast: The Purpose of the Wilderness and Doug Batchelor’s: The Woman in the Wilderness on God TV.