Wilderness Strongholds

David is on the run, Saul is hunting, and the wilderness becomes a stronghold. That single detail in 1 Samuel 23 and the mirror passage in 1 Chronicles 12 flipped a light on for us: the wilderness season is not only where God tests you, it can be where He protects you from threats you do not even see. We talk through why God sometimes pulls us out of familiar spaces, draws us closer to Him, and quietly blocks access to us while we grow up and get ready.

From there we get blunt about the state of the church in the West. Denominational bickering, theology fights, and superiority games are getting louder when unity and mission matter most. We dig into how fear and insecurity keep believers stuck in a childish “if you’re right I must be wrong” mindset, and why spiritual maturity looks like learning to disagree without dividing, then choosing to pray and work together as one body.

We also rethink spiritual warfare and evangelism. Drawing on insights associated with Dr. Michael Heiser, we argue that real spiritual warfare is bringing the gospel of Christ into hostile territory, not just talking about it. Then we close with a story from an Army field problem where carrying too much weight rendered a unit “combat ineffective” before the jump, and we connect it to how overplanning and clinging to extras can make Christians immobile. If you want a practical, Scripture-rooted push toward church unity, mission, and spiritual growth in the wilderness, this conversation is for you.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why We Ramble

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Hey, everybody, welcome to another Woe Folio short. Every now and then. There's nothing profound, and Bones and I just got to shoot the bull like we would back in the day, like we've been doing for a long, long time. And this is going to be one of those shooting the bull episodes.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Did read something that just kind of piqued my interest.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

I've read it and I go, well, there's probably more to it. So this is kind of why we shoot the bull. A lot of times we'll flesh something out just as we talk.

David’s Wilderness As A Stronghold

SPEAKER_02 0:54

But I was reading over in 1 Samuel.

Protection You Don’t Notice

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Chapter 23. Also records the same thing over in 1 Chronicles 12 8. Says a little bit different. And basically, David has been exiled by Saul. Saul intends to kill him. David remains faithful, but he ain't letting himself get killed by Saul either. And David remained in the strongholds in the wilderness, in the hill country of the wilderness of Zip, and Saul sought him every day, but God did not give him to his hand. From the Gadites there went over to David at the stronghold in the wilderness, mighty and experienced warriors, expert with shield and spear, whose faces were like the lion faces of lions, and who were as swift as gazelles upon the mountains. And, you know, all the time we've talked about wilderness, wilderness, wilderness, wilderness, wilderness. People are like, y'all gonna talk about the wilderness again? Well, probably we're gonna shoot the bull about the wilderness. And one of the things that never occurred to me is I just kind of looked back at some of our experiences. We talk about, you know, how it forces you to get along with God, how it's a moment of trying, how it's a a lot of times there's moments of temptation, but if you come out of the wilderness properly and you pass a test, then you come out with power. And we've delved into all these other different things, but one of the things we never talked about is that in some ways, at the appropriate times, the wilderness offers protection. I talked about how comfortable I became in the wilderness, but the wilderness it records in two passages of the Bible that David used it as a stronghold.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

And when I got to looking at when we went in through our wilderness period, you know, we we've never said it exactly like that. We knew God had called us out, but he protected us from a lot of junk, from a lot of BS, and the way he protected us was he drew us closer to him and also revealed why we weren't ready to be in those situations, which was also a form of protection.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, it's interesting here that David stayed in the wilderness strongholds. It doesn't really say that it doesn't give any indication that David knew that he needed to be in the strongholds. It just said that's where he stayed. Um and I think sometimes that's exactly what what we're talking about here. That God protects us when we're while we're out there. Uh even though we may not know that we need protection. Um sometimes there's battles raging, there's people um looking for us, doing things, there's a spiritual warfare going on that we may not be aware of. Um and the wilderness provides those strongholds for us and and God is is real good at protecting us from those things. Um when you get to the point where you can realize that and see that, well, that's wisdom. But uh I don't it I think it took that took us a long time to actually see that that's exactly what was going on.

Denominational Bickering And Division

SPEAKER_03 5:00

I look the to the fact that we got pulled out when we did, and we got sent into the wilderness when we did, and I compare notes, and still friends with people that stayed, you know, and maybe they didn't get called out in the wilderness. But I look at some of the priorities. And I have to say the the way that they look, and not that they haven't had their challenges, is not that they haven't had their moments where they went through it, and and you know, so not questioning their faith at all. But at the same time, when I look at how their service to God looks and them trying to serve God, when I look at that, the the focus is definitely different. I'll say it that way. Uh, the focus is definitely more on institutionalized versions of what they think God is doing. And if it is not having some kind of institutional manifestation, uh a lot of times, man, it's just a turn off for them. You know, it's just they ain't gonna do it because that's how they know it's God, is it's institutional.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

And the Holy Spirit's been revealing this to me, but it's also really been pissing me off, is I'm I'm looking at things that are out there, and we are starting to see a lot, and at the worst possible time, at least in my view, as far as the timing, we're starting to see a lot of denominational bickering, theological bickering within the body of Christ, and really don't matter to shit. It it's a bunch of dung. And and I just go, really? But because what I perceived is that the body had been praying together, uh, at least for similar things. The body of Christ here in the West had been praying for some similar things, and now you've got some of those things, and you're starting to see the tide turn against some of the more wicked manifestations of basically heathens and demonic doctrine uh infiltrating the church, and now I'm starting to see stuff Catholics versus Protestants, and if you're believing predestination and the Calvinists versus this, and you're just like that does not matter. Israel's a big dividing line, you know, and nobody considers that that we need each other.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

We're it's us, and we're the ones, and you don't consider that your brother or your sister in Christ can be wrong on an issue, but they're nevertheless your brother and sister in Christ. And that if you're willing to agree to disagree, then there's also a whole bunch more important stuff that you can work together, pray together, agree in prayer, um, and and if there's some kind of tangible work to do to give legs to that faith, that you can do that.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

But no, we want to piss and moan and show how superior we are.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

I think there's a lot of fear uh still in the body.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Mm-hmm.

Fear Insecurity And Spiritual Maturity

SPEAKER_00 9:01

A lot of fear and insecurity. And I think the two are linked together. I don't know if that you I don't know that you can separate the two. But the two are definitely definitely linked together. Um I think it comes down sometimes to where um you know if you're talking about something and someone has a different point of view or a different idea, your insecurity leads you to think that you that you're wrong. You must be wrong. Because if that person is right, well you have to be wrong. Uh or if that person's idea is different, that means your idea is incorrect. And we really got to get away from that uh way of thinking. Uh that's that's a very childish and immature way of thinking, and maturity will will steer you away from that. Um Apostle Paul talks about uh you know, wanting to wanting to feed you meat, uh, you know, wishing that you were able to receive meat, but in fact, uh you're still a babe uh requiring milk. And I think it's part of that is what he's talking about, the spiritual immaturity that won't let you progress past all the all the bickering and divisiveness and and and all those things. I remember when Jesus sent out the I think it was the 70 and they returned. And how amazed that they were that the spirits were subject to them. He sent them out and they came back and they were just so impressed with themselves that the the spirits were were uh were listening to them and and were subject to them. Um and kind of what I envisioned there was you know when you're new at something and someone's teaching you something, uh you have a tendency to ask questions, uh probably doubt yourself a little bit before you give an answer. You want to double check and make sure and all these things. Um, but that was the time when Jesus sent them out and said, now you're on your own, go do it. Um and then when they came back, they were just enamored and amazed at the fact that wow, they could do it. Um I think the church is lacking in that aspect right there. They don't know that they can do it. Yeah, you know, they they don't know that they can, they don't know that this the spirits are subject to them because they're not going out and they're not uh they're not taking captive those spirits. Uh they're not doing those things that Jesus is sending out the quote unquote 70 uh to do. Uh therefore they can't come back and be enamored and and amazed by those things. But the fact is that we do have the ability, we do have those things entrusted to us. We can do those things uh as a body, but we're too busy uh bickering and arguing. And the matter of fact is denomination, the root word of that is denom or denominate and divide. Um so at its very root, that's all the denomination is gonna do is divide. Yeah. Um, so until the denominations can come together and realize that, hey, we have some differences, but we got a mission to accomplish, they're gonna be a hard way, it's gonna be a hard road to hoe.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Well, one one of the other things that I was actually looking up that word for a different project I had going on, and the word denominated, because we use the word denominations, but also well what else is denominated? Well, money's denominated, you know, denominated your your denomination of your bill.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Um it's denominator, the the dividing of a fract, the dividing base of a fraction.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

And what it does, one of the things that the synonyms, it's to separate and classify.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

There you go. So what we have is basically this era of superiority.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

My class is better than your class. You have class warfare, so to speak, even if it's kind of just pity pat, you know, chicken stuff, that to be an outwardly uh blatantly violent, which if you look in the history of the body of Christ, sometimes the splitting up into denominations have led to warfare and wholesale slaughter.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Let's call out our own, you know, uh mistakes in the past as a body. You know, there's there's been people that have there's been Christians that have been burned at the stake by other Christians for translating the Bible.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

So again, Lord save us from ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

But you know, look, I look at it, you know, when you denominate something, it's immediately, well, we are this, and we're not like you. And it's the arm saying to the leg, I don't have need of you. You know, you it's it's the mouth saying to the eye, I I have no need of you. Not realizing that every joint is supposed to ply the other.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Right. Uh I'm I'm of Paul, you know, I'm of Apollos. I you know. Um and that's nothing new. Uh that's nothing new. We we've been man, we've been talking that for 20, 25 years. Yes. Uh and others before us, as a matter of fact. Um but it is amazing to me that we're still here uh and denominations are still here. There's that is such a stronghold uh for folks. Um for folks who who read their Bible daily uh and will will hold on to their denominational faith and for for a strong Southern Baptist to say that uh the Pentecostal has this wrong and that wrong and and and you know so on and so forth, and for the Pentecostal to turn to the to the Methodists and they say, well, they've got this wrong and that wrong. And the truth is ain't neither one of them out saving souls. Uh neither one of them are on mission.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Thank you.

Spiritual Warfare Means Gospel Mission

SPEAKER_00 15:33

So so now so now so now who's wrong?

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Yeah. There there was an old Monty Python skit, and I'm probably going to get some nasty messages by this. It was uh the meaning of life, not a very Christian movie. Made fun of a lot of denominationalism, but they had this deal with the Catholics versus the Protestants, and the Catholics had too much kids and all that stuff. And then the Protestant, you have the Protestant man that's talking to his wife. Look at look at the Catholics. Every time, you know, they every time they go to bed, they're they have to have a kid, you know, because the Pope deemed it so and it goes into this big old musical number and everything. And um anyway, it it's very, very irreverent. But his thing was the the wife starts going, oh honey, he said, Well, look at us, you know. We went to bed twice and we have two kids. She goes, We've had we went to bed twice and we've had two kids, you know. And uh any anyway, but the but the whole thing was you could do this and do this and do this and do this because we're Protestants and we're proud that we can do this, and but they never did it. So they had only they had only had relations twice and had the two kids. So even though they were talking about all this stuff they could do, that they had never done it. So that was like the running joke. Uh there was there was a guy that he passed a little while back. And whether you agree with this guy or you disagree with this guy, you will not say that this guy was not well thought out. That I mean, this guy knew how to pull apart his own arguments because because you're going to go and do this and this, and you know, we we we've said that we think apologetics is a little overused and stuff like that. Uh it probably has a place, but when it gets overused, it it can make you go, oh, whatever, dude. But there was a guy, a teacher, named named Dr. Michael Heiser. Heisner. You ever want to get informed, I would highly recommend you check out any videos of his on YouTube. But you better be prepared to listen and take some notes. Probably spend about 15 minutes learning some stuff that you didn't know.

unknown 18:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Um, he was he was one of the ones that got to talking about the possibility of different constellations uh at the time of the birth of Christ. He's one of the ones that got to talking about how the Magi could have followed certain, could could have followed certain constellations and found the baby Jesus, found the Christ child. Probably wouldn't have been a baby, probably been a toddler. But this dude is no slouch, or was no slouch mentally. And he had something that you were talking about, nobody's doing anything. He said, for all the talk of spiritual warfare, he said the greatest spiritual warfare is this. He said, and this is how a lot of people confirm this, even though they're they're not trying to make that point. He says, This is not to negate or minimize the importance of prayer. He said, but really, spiritual warfare is going into a hostile territory and proclaiming the gospel of Christ, because you are bringing the presence of the king into a hostile territory. Right. When you do that, and he said, he basically said that when you see people going into these foreign countries, why you have the miracles, why you have uh all these other things going on that a lot of times you won't see here in the West is because that is true spiritual warfare. Right. And so it's like you said, everybody's talking about it. Ain't that many people sharing the gospel? And then if you're sharing the gospel, I remember, oh, this is this is one of those moments where the Lord's like, hey dummy, I'm trying to trying to get you to come over here with me.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

And man, Pastor Holly, love the guy. But you know what you know.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

I'm like, Pastor, you know, man, evangelism, we need to be, we need to be reaching people. And so what he ended up doing was he ended up becoming, uh later on, I go, dear Lord, no. For that denomination, he'd be gonna end up being putting in charge of evangelism for the state. But we had a talk, and again, love this guy, looked up to the guy, considered him a friend, and still do, uh, even though we disagree on some things. But he goes. We had had it, we we had had a talk about evangelism and about the importance of it, and he can preach a house of fire, and he's and we're gonna go. Let me tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna go out into the highways and byways, and we're gonna, why don't you come over to church? We need to show you what programs we got and how we can benefit you. And I just hung, I was like, dear Lord, no.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

You talk about a gut punch.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Oh yeah.

Fighting Principles Versus Living Them

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Took the wind totally out of my sails. And no disrespect to the guy because you only know what you know, and you only know what you've been taught, and you couldn't have I wouldn't have been put in that man's shoes for a million bucks. Right. I'd heard something yesterday and it's been kind of rolling over in my head.

Combat Ineffective And Too Much Weight

SPEAKER_00 21:54

It's it's easier to fight for principles than it is to live by 'em. Man, I heard that and I said, Oh my goodness. There's something there. I said, first of all, be careful because you might be fighting for principles that you're not living by. So be careful. But the more I've molded over, the more I've been thinking about it for the past 24, 36 hours, and man, is I think there's a lot of that going on. Yeah. In in all kinds of sectors, not just in the church world, uh, not just in in Christendom, but uh in in all shapes of morality. Uh, you know, there's it's so much easier to get a little knowledge and then and go run your mouth than it is to actually walk that stuff out. Um because that's the hardest thing to do. And I think to me, uh that's probably one of the biggest evangelism tools is walking out those principles. What you know, walking out your uh your your faith as we you know kind of apply this to to to our faith. Um yeah, it's it's easier to fight for a principle than it is to actually live by it. And we got to be careful that we don't we don't do that, uh, because it's it's way too easy to do. Um another word that was popping up in my head a while ago as you were talking was combat ineffective.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Um we did uh I remember when I was in the 82nd we did a uh a field problem. It was a 45-day 45-day field problem. It was 15 days at Fort Smith, Arkansas, and then 30 days in uh Fort Polk, Louisiana. And it was hot, it was summer. Man, it was hot.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

No.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

But but we we went to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and the the whole idea was it was uh it was the Idri and Idri was uh uh in oh an early oh an emergency readiness deployment exercise is what it was what it was basically. So the idea was um you go to Fort Smith, Arkansas. That was your staging base for the for the airborne operation. You go to your staging base, you get upfitted, uh geared up, and do your final rehearsals, get your mission, all that stuff, and then you prepare for your airborne operation into you know Kraplacistan or whatever place you're going to, you know, and uh that was gonna be at Fort Polk, Louisiana, which there's a maneuver center down there.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Oh yeah. Most hated op for in the army.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

And it sucks because it's it's hot. Uh anyway, so we uh everything that we do, everything that we did was supposed to be like you would like you would really do it in battle, like you'd do it for real and everything. So we go, all right, you know, well, uh, we don't know how we're gonna do it unless we actually do it for real. So we did. And you got you know all your observer controllers that are going around uh checking on you, checking your gear, uh asking you questions to see if you got briefed up, all this other stuff. And it it really is a big deal. So uh come time for our our jump, uh the the observer controllers call a timeout and come down and start weighing all our rucksacks to see what we're jumping with. And oh my god, that was the heaviest jump I've ever jumped in my life. Uh the average rucksack was 80 pounds, that's what the average was. And the RTO, the radio guy, was over 100 pounds, just in a rucksack. And when we got done with the uh observer controllers, the OCs, let us let it ride. All right, hammer down. I mean, this is your mission. By the time we got done with it, and it was all said and done with, and everything, uh, they had rendered us combat ineffective. Said you're you were combat ineffective before you even jumped. They had deemed our weight had rendered us combat ineffective. We were carrying too much stuff uh into battle, doing all these things, and we had overplanned and uh and all these things because we were afraid that our supply lines were going to get cut. I mean, there's legitimate reasons for all this.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

But we were rendered combat ineffective because we were holding on so tightly to things. And I see that sometimes in the body of Christ, that we were holding on to things, we get so weighted down that we can't move into enemy territory territory because we're just way too heavy. Uh we're not uh we're not putting faith and confidence in Jesus Christ, letting him take us to places that we've never been before. And we're just trying to, we're we're trying to move forward on our last experience, and it's getting us into trouble. We're getting we're getting rendered combat ineffective. Uh so we've got to figure out how to stop doing that. I think the wilderness is one of those ways that God uses to peel off that weight, to, to pare us down, to to strip us of some of that stuff that we don't need. Man, we had we were carrying way too much food, uh, way too way too much water. I mean, stuff that was life-saving stuff, but we didn't need it. So I feel like that sometimes in the body of Christ. We're just combat ineffective because we won't uh because we've misplaced our faith.

Next Time Teaser And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_03 27:48

I like what you said about we're not gonna let that go. Hey everybody, thanks for listening. We're gonna continue this conversation on our next episode and talk about being combat ineffective. You can always check us out at wofoyo.org or subscribe on that podcast, Spotify, or check us out on YouTube. Remember, folks, if you want to grow, you got a wofo yo. Get in the word for yourself.