Why God Uses the Desert Before the Breakthrough
What if your desert season isn’t punishment, but preparation? Discover how Jesus delivers, transforms, and builds destiny through the very places that feel like defeat.
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8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers,[a] of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
The Deliverance of Jesus: Moving from Oppression to Liberation
When we read our passage, 2 Corinthians 1:8-11, we encounter the Apostle Paul in a place few of us would expect to find him: in the depths of a desert season, crying out for deliverance. The passage is brief, but these verses are power-packed.
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted to us through the prayers of many.” 2 Corinthians 1:8-11
The deliverance of Jesus operates in two ways.
There is a deliverance of Jesus at times that is immediate, and we see this in Scripture.
Then we see the pattern where the deliverance of Jesus is gradual, and we see this as the people of God were involved in the Exodus.
But the bottom line is that in the ministry of the deliverance of Jesus, people move from oppression to liberation. In the deliverance of Jesus, men and women believers move from bondage to blessing.
What Is Blessing?
Let us revisit the word “blessing” for a moment. The Hebrew word baruch literally means to empower someone to prosper spiritually and emotionally, to succeed, and to thrive. In other words, God is interested and passionate about human flourishing rooted in Christ through His gospel.
Another word for the blessing of God found in the Old Testament is shalom, which is the heart of God for a person individually as well as a people in community. God’s peace, His completeness, harmony, health, and the welfare of a people.
The deliverance of Jesus positions a man or woman in Christ to experience the fullness of God’s baruch, of God’s blessing, of God’s shalom. The liberation of Jesus positions you in a way to know the joy of the Lord, peace in the Lord, liberty in the Lord.
Desert Seasons; Divine Appointments
When Adam and Eve sinned, there is much we learn from that story. One of the things we note is that they were filled with fear, and fear lied to them. One of the things fear did to them was that they could not see the love of God. They could not perceive the love of God. This is part of what sin does to us in our fallen nature: it dampens our ability to perceive the heart of God.
In the story of God’s people leaving Egypt, God led them to the desert. Pay attention to that reality, because in the desert season that God’s people experienced, lots of things got exposed. The heart of God, when you read the story, was not always to judge. There were times when He had to judge out of His love, but overall, what God sought to do was, as things came into the light, to redeem the people and lead them into a promised land.
They moved into the desert, and when they went into that desert season, they began to grumble. What happens in the difficulty of a desert season is that what is on the inside begins to be exposed by what becomes apparent on the outside. In the difficulty, people begin asking logical questions as they interpret what is happening to them:
God, are You with me?
God, are You still there?
God, do You still love me?
God, are Your promises true?
In the desert, other weaknesses get exposed. Character flaws get exposed. All of it is a reflection of the things that ultimately God wants to develop in us as things are coming to light. In the desert, sometimes we squirm, we cry, we complain, and we are tempted even to justify actions that we know are not God-honoring. But God is using the desert season to bring light on some of the areas of our lives that He is seeking to develop as He is moving us toward Christlike character.
We are aware that, as God delivered the people from Egyptian taskmasters, they held on to their slave mentality. In the Old Testament, the people of God had a destiny, and that destiny was to enter the Promised Land, a land with milk and honey, which is a metaphor for enjoying and knowing the fullness of God in their lives, what we sometimes call sanctification. It is really a place of liberty and joy in the Lord and flourishing in Christ.
Each child of God really does have a destiny, a design that God wants you to flourish in, a promised land. This is why the New Testament says:
“You are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand.” Ephesians 2:10
But here is the deal. Here is an axiom: There are often no destinies to fulfill without some deserts to endure.
That didn’t just come out of thin air; that axiom is all over the Bible. God doesn’t give us stories in the Bible to entertain us, but to equip us. That was true for Joseph in his life of temporary slavery, false accusation, and imprisonment. That is true in Moses’ life, including the 40 years he spent in the desert before his ministry took on traction. That is true with God’s people in Exodus. That is true with John the Apostle on the island of Patmos. That is true in the episode we are opening up and studying today regarding the life of Paul. It is also true for Jesus in the 40 days in the wilderness, as well as His crucifixion.
If it is true for all of these, then I am saying in the most encouraging way: it is also true for you.
When you go through desert seasons in your life, God is at work, not only bringing to light things He wants to develop, but these are some of the most strategic times in your life. Deserts feel like huge setbacks, but deserts are setups for a greater revelation of God when you turn to Him. Deserts are setups for a greater breakthrough when we turn to God in our desert seasons. Deserts, for the believer, function like divine appointments.
In the desert, God often does not change your circumstances. In the desert, God changes you. But after the work of God developing you, your circumstances often change. You see that all over the pages of the Bible.
What God builds into you in the desert season is what forms the foundation for His destiny and design for your life. And this is God’s work, not your work. Philippians 1:6 says, “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion.” Then, Philippians 2:13 declares, “It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
For the believer, a desert season functions like a divine appointment when we turn to God in surrender. It is a tool that God has in His toolbox to utilize to develop you when you are humble enough to look to Him in a desert season.
When the Israelites were led out through the desert, God gave them water from a rock. Do not overlook that, because that tells us a lot. There are divine resources in the desert. There are divine resources available in desert seasons, but you often do not discover them until you get thirsty, meaning until you get thirsty for God, and until in the brokenness that comes in a desert season.
You do not taste the satisfaction of living water until you get thirsty and get hungry and maybe even get broken. Brokenness is not a good cry; that is not biblical brokenness. That might be grieving, but that is not brokenness. Brokenness is like when a horse surrenders to its master, and now the horse is responsive to the leading and nudging of the master. That is what God is looking for in the life of a believer, a contriteness that says, “Okay, God, now I yield.”
This is what desert seasons are unto.
The Apostle Paul’s Desert Season
In this passage, we see a spiritual saint who needs deliverance. He is in a desert season. The Apostle Paul is dealing with something. He does not identify specifically what it is, but he is dealing with something that has put him deep in a desert season, and he is crying out for help.
Here is a principle: There is no better prey than a lion that gets wounded. Right now, the Apostle Paul is a lion, not only for God and God’s purposes, but he is a wounded lion.
This brother in Christ is under constant pressure in his work as an apostle, especially with his relationship with the church at Corinth, including the potential collapse of the mission field in which he has invested his entire life. We are not aware specifically of what Paul is dealing with in this instance because the Bible does not tell us. But we are aware of characteristics that Paul has navigated:
Imprisonment (Acts 16:23-24),
Beatings (2 Corinthians 11:24-25)
Stoning that left him for dead (Acts 14:19).
Opposition and false accusations from both Jews and Gentiles (Acts 13:50; 2 Corinthians 11:26)
Life-threatening dangers such as shipwrecks (Acts 27:41-44)
Plots against his life (Acts 23:12-15)
We do not know the specific circumstances he is in because he does not tell us. But he tells us that things are bad.
So, we need to ask the question: What is the deliverance of Jesus? How do we experience deliverance? Paul here gives us a how-to.
Five Marks of the Deliverance of Jesus
1) The Deliverance of Jesus Is Not a Human Deliverance
“But that was to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.” 2 Corinthians 1:9
Why is Paul referring to the resurrection? Because he is reminding the church, and also reminding himself, that God is all-powerful. He is reminding hearers and himself that the deliverance of Jesus is a powerful deliverance.
Paul had heard the words from the Old Testament: “Not by might” (in other words, not by human strength), “nor by power” (not by human power), “but by my Spirit, says the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). These were words familiar to Paul. These were words probably familiar to the Corinthians. But they needed reminding.
Not only did they need to be reminded, but we also need to be reminded. We need to be reminded that the deliverance of God is a powerful deliverance. When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, there is a line: “Lord, deliver us from evil.” We need to be reminded that Jesus Christ is a deliverer. We need to be reminded that Jesus Christ is the Deliverer, and He still delivers.
This is why Jonathan Edwards said to the church, “We ought not limit God where God has not limited Himself.” Our God is all-powerful, and our God is a Deliverer.
When Paul prayed for deliverance, this was not an isolated incident in his ministry. In Philippians, while he was in prison, he wrote: “For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance” (Philippians 1:19). Again, this is not a human deliverance. He declared that this deliverance of Jesus comes in the power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Christ, in the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.
The deliverance of Jesus is not a human deliverance.
2) The Deliverance of Jesus Is a Truth-Filled Deliverance
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.” 2 Corinthians 1:8-9
Notice two things:
First, notice what Paul is not doing in his self-talk. Paul is not saying, “Oh my gosh, I’m a well-known apostle. My identity is what I do. If I’m honest about what I’m going through, what are people going to think of me?” Paul is modeling that he is not allowing pride to get in the way, and that his personhood is not tied to his title.
Second, if you were to walk into a counselor’s office and say, “I’m in a condition where I despair of life itself. I feel as if the sentence of death just hangs over my life like a cloud,” that counselor is going to look at you and say with probably 99% probability: you are suffering from clinical depression.
What I am pointing out here is that the Apostle Paul is not sugarcoating. He is not toning down the reality of what he is navigating. He is being black-and-white honest about what he is navigating and his condition at this time. That tells us something very significant: The deliverance of Jesus requires that we be truth-filled people.
In the deliverance of Jesus, we say:
I have a problem with alcohol. I need help.
I have a problem with overeating. I need help.
I have a problem with pornography. I need help.
I have a problem with gossip or slander. I need help.
I have a problem with compulsive shopping.
I have a problem with hoarding.
I have a problem with substance abuse or drug abuse.
I have a problem with online gambling.
I have a problem with jealousy and envy as a pattern.
I have a problem with self-pity.
I have a problem with [fill in the blank].
The deliverance of Jesus is a truth-filled deliverance. If you want to be free, if you have been bumping up against a wall, notice that the pattern of the deliverance of Jesus is not a will-to, it is a how-to. You want to be free? You move into the how-to.
3) The Deliverance of Jesus Is Not a Private Deliverance
Notice what Paul wrote in verse 8: “For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters.” He is asking for the help of his brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul the Apostle is being truthful, and he is asking specifically with what we would call healthy transparency from other trusted believers in Christ.
Paul is not oversharing. He has been in relationship with these people for years. There is a deep relationship that exists between these believers and the Apostle Paul. He is not sharing with people who are not part of his trusted community.
Let me say some things that are very basic: Christianity was never designed to be practiced in isolation. Christianity is embodied. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). It is an embodied presence, being not only present with the Lord in worship and discipleship, but being present with one another, being fully present. We are designed for a deep, abiding community with one another.
Rather than being put off by that notion, every brother or sister in Christ I know who has experienced true, life-giving, authentic community (and it takes time), always says, “Why didn’t somebody tell me this could be this good?”
This is part of the genius of the Christian movement through a people called Methodists. Wesley called people to deep community in societies, classes, and bands. Band meetings are groups of three to five people of the same gender. As you build trust with one another in community, you do not jump out of the gate asking deep questions. But as you build trust and comfort level, and you grow to love one another and trust one another, then you move into questions like these:
What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
What temptations have you met with?
How were you delivered?
What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
What is important is that these questions are not gotcha questions. These questions are rooted in the spirit of caring for one another and fighting for one another in the heart and in prayer to grow and develop into the image of Jesus. James captured this beautifully when he wrote: “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). Not to judge one another, but so that you may be healed, so that you may be developed into the image of Jesus.
Years ago, I was leading a men’s discipleship group that had grown close over months of prayer and studying the Word together. One evening, during a particularly rich time of prayer, a quiet, reserved man in his fifties suddenly began to weep. When he gathered himself, he shared something from his college years that he had never told another person.
It was as if the Holy Spirit was performing gentle surgery. Fear and shame had bound him for decades. But as the brothers surrounded him with compassion, prayer, and encouragement, something began to break. Over the following months, people started asking, “What happened to Dave? He’s different.”
What had happened was that God had freed him. God had done this work where he knew he was healed, and he experienced it.
Do you realize that being in the church really should be more like an AA meeting? It should be a place where it is safe for people to get free. And it can be, if we are genuinely leaning into being the people of God in deep community with one another.
The deliverance of Jesus is not a private deliverance.
4) The Deliverance of Jesus Is a Prayer-Filled Deliverance
Look at verse 11. Paul said, “You must help us.” Help! And how does he say you can help? “By prayer.”
Craig Groeschel refers to a term called “practical atheist.” I have a definition I like to use: Believers who have lost the sense of the interplay between the natural and spiritual worlds.
This admonition to pray around the deliverance of Jesus is not an isolated incident in the Apostle Paul’s ministry. Again, Philippians 1:19: “I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance.”
Paul, who had been called up to the third heaven and had seen revelations of God at a level none of us has imagined, understood the interplay between the natural and the spiritual, and he understood that prayer has a distinct role in this context.
You may remember Paul and Silas when they were locked up in Acts 16. They had been stripped, beaten, and thrown down into the hole of a prison cell. What did they begin doing? They needed deliverance. They were in prison. They began doing something completely counterintuitive, because they began to sing hymns and pray.
“About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly, there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened.” Acts 16:25-26
I got a phone call about ten o’clock one night. I will call him Dave, not his real name. He said, “Paul, can you meet me down at the church?” I met him, and we sat on an altar. He confessed, “Paul, I’ve had a cocaine addiction that nobody knows about for this long, and I need help.” We talked for about an hour. At the conclusion of that hour, I laid hands on him and prayed. God set him free.
Now, I want to be clear with you: I have seen God do that instantaneous work on rare occasions. Most of the time, the deliverance of Jesus is gradual, and that is what we see illustrated in Exodus. That is also what we see illustrated in Paul’s life right here. The reason I share that story with you is that we need to be open to both as a church family.
It is a prayer-filled deliverance.
5) The Deliverance of Jesus Is a Worshipful Deliverance
Paul wrote: “You must also help us by prayer so that many will give thanks” (2 Corinthians 1:11). Who are they thanking? They are thanking God. This is worship. “Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise” (Psalm 100:4). We are thanking God for who He is and what He does.
Paul’s main objective is to glorify Christ, and to say not “Look at what I’ve done,” but “Look at God. Look at what God does. Look at who Jesus is. Look at Him as the Deliverer.” He gives God glory.
Verse 10: “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.” Those are words of giving glory to God in Christ.
My Chains Fell Off
In John Wesley’s day, alcoholism was endemic in the culture. It was very difficult to find anyone who was not abusing alcohol. During the Wesleyan revivals, God was moving and setting captives free. Charles Wesley, who also came to Christ, was writing songs. Any time in history where there is a great revival, a great move of God, there are always new songs that get written, and they are usually really good.
Listen to these words from “And Can It Be”:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay, Fast bound in sin and nature’s night. Thine eye diffused a quickening ray— I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Wesley wrote not only what he experienced, but what he was seeing happen in the lives of people who had been bound up in patterns that put a lid on their development.
Jesus is still reigning. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He has not changed.
The invitation today is this: Step into the pattern for the glory of God and allow God to do His work and give Him glory.
TL;DR
Deserts expose what’s inside us, including our fears, doubts, pride, and “slave mentalities,” but they are often divine appointments, not detours.
The deliverance of Jesus is not human strength, but resurrection power; “God who raises the dead.”
True deliverance requires truth, transparency, community, prayer, and worship, because it is not private or prideful.
We worship Jesus because He has delivered us, He is delivering us, and He will deliver us again.
