Milk and Honey Day 3: Testing the Vision and Why 40 Days

“The Promise of Gold” by Bek Harris. 16×20 Oil Pastel on Cansen Mi-Tienes Paper ©2021
Original painting of a field of wheat documenting a vision of wheat fields

There is a distinct vulnerability that comes with receiving and speaking about some kind of vision, especially when the landscape of your actual life does not match the imagery in your head.

When the whisper of this new direction, visualizing vast, gold drenched wheat fields, first settled into my heart, it brought immediate tension. The imagery felt like abundance, rest, and a promised harvest. But my reality was a wilderness that had already stretched on for several years. I was facing setbacks, deep fatigue, and circumstances that refused to change. Those set backs have felt constant and I’m still in the middle of one as I write this.

I often battle a persistent voice saying “you are crazy, this is wishful thinking; nothing is going to change.”

When you have spent years watching things not work out, your instincts push you to wait for resolution before believing a promise. Hope gets bruised, and over time it feels safer to only talk about what looks finished rather than what is still unresolved.

I have said several times that I cannot tell if I am Jonah or Job. Am I in a storm because I have gone off course, or in a trial where faith is being refined?

Because of that internal tension, I knew I could not run with this impression blindly. I had to test it.

In my walk with God, I have learned that spiritual maturity is not treating every thought or impression as an automatic divine message. Scripture calls us to discern. 1 John 4:1 says, “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

Over time, I have noticed that when God is leading me, He tends to confirm things repeatedly through different avenues.

I notice patterns in threes. A theme that resurfaces. A piece of counsel. A passage of Scripture that keeps appearing. That pattern is not superstition or a formula. It is simply the personal language that has developed between God and me over time. Scripture often uses three as emphasis or completeness. Jesus rose on the third day. Peter was restored three times. It has become a way I slow down and pay attention.

For this vision, testing required quiet surrender, counsel, and grounding in truth.

1. The Weight of Scripture

Any internal impression must align with Scripture and the character of God. If it does not, it is not to be followed.

As I wrestled with this vision, God kept bringing two books to me: Exodus and Ruth.

The first few years I spent a lot of time in Exodus where I saw a people formed through wilderness dependence before they ever entered promise. More recently, in Ruth, I’m seeing loss slowly turning into restoration through faithful, daily obedience. Neither story is instant. Both are formed through process.

2. An Abundance of Counsel

Proverbs 11:14 says, “In an abundance of counselors there is safety.”

When you are stuck in the Jonah or Job tension, you need people who know your story and can speak with wisdom. I brought this vision to a trusted friend who knew the full weight of my history. Speaking about wheat fields while still feeling barren was difficult, but her response gave the vision an external anchor when my own confidence was shaking.

3. Asking for Confirmation

In seasons of exhaustion, I often ask God for clarity. Not demands, but honesty.

I found myself asking for confirmation, for steadiness, for grounding.

And quietly, repeatedly, things would align. Scriptures resurfaced. Circumstances connected in ways that felt intentional. Reminders kept pointing back to the same image when everything around me still looked empty.

Two verses especially anchored me…

Genesis 50:21
“So do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.”

Isaiah 43:19
“See, I am doing a new thing… I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Both grounded the vision. Not just restoration in idea, but provision in practice. Not just survival, but sustaining what had been fragile and rebuilding what felt lost.

Testing the vision did not remove the wilderness or answer the timing. But it gave me a framework to step forward instead of waiting for resolution. It became an invitation to trust God in the uncertainty.

This is part of why this project is forty days.

Throughout Scripture, forty is often a number of transition and formation. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness before entering promise. Elijah traveled forty days in the strength of God’s provision through exhaustion. Moses spent forty days in the presence of God on the mountain being formed for what he would carry next.

Biblically, forty is rarely about arrival. It is about formation. A space where God is not rushing the outcome, but shaping what will be carried into it.

This is not a story of standing in a completed harvest. It is the middle. It is holding vision while still walking through wilderness conditions. It is choosing to move in uncertainty rather than waiting for everything to feel resolved.

Because the wandering was never meaningless.

We are not abandoned. We are not forgotten. We are still in process.

Still walking.
Still learning.
Still becoming.
And still moving toward the field.