Lost In the Familiar – A Morning Devotional from the Edges !

Lost in the Familiar
Pastor Calvin Cook
April 2, 2025

Key Verse: “I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19)

Have you ever found yourself lost in a place you know like the back of your hand? The same town, the same job, the same daily rhythms—but something feels off. The light seems dimmer. Your heart feels heavier. You’re in familiar territory, but nothing looks the same.

This is the wilderness we often don’t talk about—the inner desert that forms when our surroundings stay the same, but our spirit starts to dry up. When the things that used to give us purpose no longer satisfy. When prayers feel unanswered, and routines feel empty.

Isaiah 43:19 speaks directly to moments like these. God says, “I am doing a new thing… I am making a way in the wilderness.” That wilderness isn’t always a literal one—it’s often the desert within us, the one we walk through silently even while life, whether good or bad, moves on around us.

So what desert are you in?
• Maybe it’s spiritual dryness—where your faith feels distant, and your prayers echo back silence.
• Maybe it’s emotional exhaustion—grief, burnout, or anxiety that won’t lift.
• Maybe it’s relational emptiness—feeling unseen even in the middle of your community or your family.
• Or maybe it’s vocational confusion—doing the work you used to love but now questioning why it even matters.

How do we find the way out?
First, we recognize that the way out might actually be a way through. God doesn’t always airlift us from the desert—He leads us through it. But He promises to do something new, even right there in the middle of the wasteland. That means:
• Pause and notice. “Do you not perceive it?” Sometimes we’re so focused on escape that we miss that which God is doing in our present.
• Listen for the whisper. God often speaks most clearly in the quietest places.
• Trust the unseen path. God’s “way in the wilderness” may not look like a highway—it might be a narrow pathway that causes us to step wisely, it might seem like a slow trickle, a small step, a nudge toward something unexpected.
• Surround yourself with people who are willing to walk with you not just tell you the way to go.
• Be open for new directions, you really don’t have all the answers. No one does but God alone.
• Avoid the distractions that lead to destruction. Remembering that what seems like it may be good and godly, just may not be. Remember the scripture of the wolf that appears dressed like a sheep. (Matthew 7:15)

Life’s struggles can feel like a wilderness—dry and directionless. God promises to create a way, just as He parted the Red Sea for Israel. Jesus fulfills this by making a way to eternal life through His sacrifice. Further we have been promised the Holy Spirit as a companion, advocate, and directional force to get us through whatever desert we are in.