You need the wilderness.

Did you realize that Paul had a wilderness season that lasted 13 years?

Thirteen years.

I was reading in a text book recently for my New Testament 2 seminary class, and the number practically leapt off the page. I never, ever, realized it or had seen it.

So what’s the significance of the number 13?

Thirteen is the number of years that went by between when Paul was miraculously called on the road to Damascus and when he started the ministry we read out about in the epistles.

Thirteen years!

Did you know that?

And here’s where it gets even better: Three of those years were spent in the wildness of “Arabia.” The other ten he literally went back to his hometown and just was, as far as we know. Nothing spectacular is recorded in those 10 years. Paul barely talks about it. In some senses, he was “stuck” in no man’s land.

We don’t preach that in our churches much, do we? In fact, I don’t think we preach enough about all the wilderness experiences in the Bible. But the truth is that so many titans of the faith had wilderness experiences: Paul (13 years), Moses (40 …