Content taken from Your Wilderness Is Not a Waste by Dustin Crowe, ©2025. Used by permission of Moody Publishers.

One reason God allows us to get to a place of feeling our reliance or need is because it’s then we look to Him. Like our eyes adjust to a light being turned on in the darkness, our felt dependence in the wilderness stings at first but our spiritual eyes then become open to what God is doing around us. When we know we need help, that’s where we must trust in God more fully, which is ultimately how our faith grows.

Deuteronomy 8 is one of my favorite wilderness chapters. Moses reflects on all God has done and the lessons learned in their years of wandering. “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).

God tells Israel that He let them get hungry so He could come through on His promise to take care of them. He lets their faith be tested, or lets His faithfulness be tested, so that it could also be proven.

Strengthen Your Faith as it’s Stretched

The things we want to avoid are often the things that cause us to grow. We want God to excuse us from trials, but they mature us as people, teach us endurance, and grow our faith. Because these are what’s best for us, though not easiest, God allows them in our lives. They are blessings in disguise that God knows we need but we would never choose.

We don’t like feeling dependent, lacking control, experiencing weakness, or facing our insufficiencies. We want to be in control. We want to meet everyone’s expectations, know all the answers, and be able to solve our problems. If we could do all these things, we would never feel our need for God and we would trust in self. The Christian life is about living by faith in God, not trusting in self. To live by faith we must be stretched until we need faith.

We must walk through circumstances and challenges where we can’t foresee the answer or face obstacles we can’t overcome on our own. God uses troubles and trials to wean us off our trust in anything other than Him. Our faith is fed through feeling hunger, not by avoiding it.

Weakness, dependence, and limits open doors to living by faith in God and seeing His faithfulness. If He’s letting a wilderness test your faith, He also wants to prove why He’s the only one worthy of your faith. He lets your faith be stretched, not so it breaks, but so it gets stronger.

Embrace Your Daily Dependence on God

In Exodus 16, Israel wakes up with new hungers, but they also awake to God’s fresh provision. God knows their needs and has the answer ready before the day even starts. But it does require faith from them. Instead of anxiously attempting to store more manna than they need, they collect enough for that day. Rather than planting crops or stockpiling resources, they must enter into daily dependence.

There’s a sports cliché athletes use that feels like a line they’re supposed to parrot. In many interviews, a reporter will ask someone about an upcoming opponent, and the player will say, “We’re not thinking about them. We just need to take it one game at a time and play the next team up.” That idea was probably pounded into them by the coaches because it’s an important principle. If the Cincinnati Reds play the Chicago Cubs today, they need all their attention on the Cubs. It doesn’t help to think about playing the Pittsburgh Pirates next week. Players can’t affect the game in advance, but they can affect today’s game.

Jesus teaches a similar idea in the Lord’s Prayer when He says to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). Why does Jesus teach us to pray this way, asking God to provide this day our daily bread? Wouldn’t it be better to ask God for a freezer full of bread? That’s how we want God to work. We want God to provide well in advance or to supply us a whole week’s worth of bread. We’d prefer God tell us the whole path and not just the next step or transform us all at once instead of taking little strides in maturity.

God knows what’s best for us is to live by daily bread. The good news is if you experience daily dependence and desperation, that doesn’t mean you’re failing as a Christian or you’re not strong enough. It could mean you’re experiencing the normal Christian life, which is about daily dependence on God and His grace.

Only a few verses after Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread, He talked about anxiety or worry. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34). Because every day will have its own share of troubles and trials, it doesn’t solve anything to try to fix or worry about tomorrow’s problems. But we can live faithfully and dependently by God’s help today, resting in His grace right now.

The call to live on God’s daily grace shrinks our worries, stresses, and demands into more manageable chunks. Sometimes our worries, fears, and burdens overwhelm us because we imagine having to endure them forever. Or we create the worst-case scenario in our head and want grace for that, but all we need is help or grace for what we’re walking through right now. God doesn’t promise wisdom, strength, or hope for tomorrow’s troubles or for potential trials. But whatever it is you’re walking through today, in this season, or in this wilderness journey, He offers the manna you need through His generous provision and powerful grace. God gives enough bread for today’s burdens, not future ones. Entrust yourself, day by day, to His watchful care.