I. Meeting God the Lord 00:00
As I share the words that you’ve given me this morning, I just pray that you would make a way, Lord. I pray that you would make a way in the wilderness, I pray that you would make a spring in the dry places, and I pray that you would transform the areas of our heart that we feel are dead and dying, and through this season that you would bring it to flourishing, Father. And I pray that as I share these words today, you would open our ears to hear what you have to say. In Jesus’ name, amen.
I’m excited to be preaching with you this morning. I was thinking about it when I was looking at my notes, and something came over me, and I was like, “God himself has something he wants to say to his people, and I get to be a part of that.” Sometimes I come up and it just feels hard to preach, maybe because I don’t feel prepared, or maybe because I just think, “Man, it’s so difficult to communicate the thoughts that I feel like I have,” whatever it is. Sometimes it’s hard to get up there and preach. But this morning, in Lent, our most solemn of seasons, I want you to know that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh 8.10), that there is something that God wants to say to us, and because I know that, I’m excited to be a part of it.
We sometimes forget who our God is. Day in and day out we go through our lives, and things happen to us, things test us, and we forget who he is. Even this morning, as I was putting this sermon together and looking over my notes, I was getting to this point where I was feeling like, “Ugh, I don’t know if I can get through this.” And that’s when the button clicked, when the thing switched in my head: “Wait a second, wait a second. Don’t you know that what you’re doing is talking to my people?” That’s what God wanted to say. What we do when we come here is we meet God the Lord. It’s not about how perfect I am, how perfect my notes are. It’s not even about how perfect the worship is, as awesome as it is. It’s about meeting God the Lord.
So if I have one hope, it’s that God would speak to us this morning. And I want you to know that he wants to encourage us this morning. He wants us to draw closer to him. As Father Powell said on Ash Wednesday, he wants us to take a vacation from fear. And I’ll add that the destination is trust. And hopefully, by taking this forty-day vacation from fear with our destination being trust, we can find a way to make that our permanent residence. That’s what we do when we choose to draw closer to God, as we choose to replace fear with trust. So when we talk about Lent, let it not be a list of things you have to do or pleasures you have to forgo. Let it be about coming nearer to the God of our salvation.
II. Led by the Spirit into the Wilderness 01:58
The framework for Lent has always been the temptation of Jesus in the desert, the forty days where he fasted at the beginning of his ministry. So we’re going to go over that in a little more detail than we did in the Gospel reading today. The Gospel of Mark is all about speed: immediately this happened, and immediately that happened. So he doesn’t dwell on the temptations. He just says it happens, and he explains that the point was he was being ministered to by the angels, he was overcoming temptation, and now let’s launch into Jesus’ ministry (Mark 1.12–13). And that’s awesome. But we’re going to hang out instead with Matthew, who takes a little more leisurely stroll, and he opens up to us what is really happening to Jesus in those forty days where he’s fasting in the wilderness. You’ve probably heard this story a hundred times, but I hope that you just pay attention this morning, because I think that there’s not many stories in the Gospels that are more encouraging than the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and I’ll explain why as we go along. We’ll start in Matthew chapter 4, verse 1:
1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Matt 4.1
So what just happened? If you look at our icon over here, you can see the Holy Spirit came down on Jesus in his baptism, and God said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That’s the God of the universe! Imagine we were watching a documentary on the royal family on Netflix. There’s some documentary that came out, and they were talking about announcing the next-born royal son, and there was all this joy and jubilation, and people were celebrating, and reporters and people around the world were talking about the birth of a royal son. That’s the type of proclamation we get over Jesus, in the most unlikely of places, in the baptism in the river Jordan by John the Baptizer. And instead of celebration, what does the Spirit do? Because God’s kingdom’s a little different than ours. Instead of letting him revel in his glory, “I’m the Son of God,” Mark tells us he immediately drives him into the wilderness. I love that phrasing. Here it says he was led by the Spirit. Mark gets right to it; he says the Spirit drove him into the wilderness (Mark 1.12).
I think that resonates with us. I think we’ve been there. I think we know what it means to be driven into the wilderness. So the first thing I want you to know, the first challenge of trust this morning, is to follow where the Spirit leads, even if he leads you into the wilderness to be tempted, or (another word for that Greek word there) tested, by the devil. It reminds me of a C. S. Lewis quote that just strikes me every time I read it. He says, “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” We don’t necessarily think God doesn’t have our best in mind, but we’re wondering how much pain and suffering is included in that. We are fickle in our attention. Sometimes we would rather run to the easy pleasures than the glory that’s set before us in God. But I want to challenge you to trust God as he drives you into the wilderness this Lenten season.
III. Tempted as We Are 06:07
One thing this shows us, though, is that Jesus himself, the Superman, the one that we think of as perfect and holy and great (he’s all those things), also was man, and he was able to be tempted. I don’t know how that works. I don’t think anybody does. But in some way he was tempted, and let me prove it to you. In Hebrews we read:
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Heb 4.14–16
So when I’m talking about Lent being a time not necessarily of just giving up good things and taking on disciplines, really the point is: let us with confidence draw near and receive grace to help in our time of need. Why? Because Jesus knows.
The other day we were changing our newborn baby, Rhys. We were changing his diaper, and he was crying. He’s a newborn; he doesn’t really love that. And Rowan comes over and goes, “I know, Rhys. I know, Rhys,” because that’s what we say to Rhys: “I know, it’s so hard, Rhys.” We encourage him. But why is that the comforting phrase, “I know”? Because that’s what Jesus can say to us when we run to him in our distress. He can really say, “I know. I hear you.” It’s not an outside observer. It’s not a distant God. It’s someone who entered into the flesh, who entered into our weakness and our humanity. And when we come to him in our despair, when we come to him in our pain, somehow we can hold on to the fact that he knows. And maybe that is what Jesus says when you come to him. He says, “I know.” And then he embraces us with his forgiveness and his love, and he empowers us to walk out of that place of despair, of sin, of darkness, of pain. Because Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, we can have confidence to approach and receive that type of love and grace.
So I’m not going to go into this too much, but I want to challenge you: go to confession this Lent. If you just want to schedule a time, talk to any of our priests. And the joy of confession is that at the end the priest says, basically, “God knows your sin, and yet you are cleansed and forgiven.” Hearing that in the sacrament of reconciliation, the sacrament of confession, changes the game. I’ve noticed that in my life. Sometimes we think God loves us because he doesn’t know us: “If only people knew how much of a lazy or insignificant or terrible or no-good person I am, then they would reject me.” But I want you to know today: God knows, and yet he loves you, and he pushes towards you, not away from you. So this Lent, keep that in mind as we talk about these things.
IV. HALT 09:20
2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. Matt 4.2
Which seems like the understatement of the century. He hasn’t eaten for forty days: “he was hungry.” Yeah, okay, I get it. It makes sense. I go without a meal and I’m starving, and probably miserable to be around. The reason they’re pointing this out is that when you’re in that moment, that’s when the enemy comes, and he wants to tempt you.
There’s an acronym that I learned: HALT. (Actually there’s another word for it, because it actually spells the word, so it’s an acronym, but it’s also another thing.) But it’s HALT, and it means hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. The context where I learned this is when you’re having a difficult conversation with somebody, especially, let’s say, your spouse. HALT: if you’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, stop, assess, have a snack, then continue the conversation. I’ll tell you, it works. We’ve been there. I’ve done that. It works. Just stop, admit where you’re at, notice where you’re at, and change the direction.
And I say that because there are so many times in our life where we do those things. Maybe there’s that thing that you do, let’s say road rage. All day somebody cuts you off, and you’re like, “God bless them.” You’re working on it: “Oh, Jesus, it’s Lent. I’m going to be so holy.” But then you’re at the end of your 12-hour shift, and you didn’t get your lunch break, and you’re just going home, and you had a conversation with your wife and something didn’t happen, and so you’re angry. You’re feeling these things. You’re hungry, you’re angry, you’re lonely because you’ve been in a truck all day, you’re tired, and then somebody cuts you off. That’s the moment when the temptation really comes. That’s the moment where you have to halt, take stock, realize, ask God for help. Because the greatest promise that we get is that we have the Holy Spirit in us, who can help us in our weakness. In a moment you can stop and realize, “Oh, this is where I’m at. Help!” Halt.
V. Not by Bread Alone 11:26
So, moving on. The tempter’s coming. He’s had his moment of weakness.
3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Matt 4.3
First of all, let’s clarify something. I always like to point this out when we talk about the temptations: the devil did not come with horns and a tail and a pitchfork and approach Jesus and say, “Listen to me.” I think all of us know that he probably would have been like, “Okay, I see what you’re doing. You don’t look trustworthy to me.” That’s not what the devil did. I posit that these temptations were in the mind of Jesus, just like our temptations are in our own minds. I posit that Jesus had a thought: “Well, if God just gave me this mandate, this identity as the Son of God, and I’m hungry and I’m at the end of my… I could just turn these stones into bread.” And yet he recognized that that was from the devil. So there’s something here that we could learn: some of our thoughts are not good thoughts. We don’t have to listen to them. We can recognize, “That’s not from God. That’s not a good way to go.”
So here Jesus is being tempted to fulfill the physical craving, and inherent in this challenge is the question: can God provide in my moment of weakness? Because there’s this challenge in there: “Well, if God really loves me, then I could do this thing,” or, “God would provide bread for me when I need it.” And in there, too, is: which master will you serve, your hunger or God the Lord?
So how does Jesus respond?
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matt 4.4
So he’s responding to himself and encouraging himself with Scripture. And he’s saying the whole point for me to be fasting… Why is Jesus even fasting? To hear the voice of the Lord, to prepare for ministry. And yet he’s being tempted to go after a lesser good, to go after something that might satisfy in the moment but isn’t the point, isn’t where God’s leading him.
There’s a temptation for us, especially in this day and age, to go after the easy food, to go after the things that we have. We are in one of the most prosperous societies in the history of the world. I would just say the most prosperous society in the history of the world. You can get McDonald’s anytime you want. I read something funny where it was a guy coming from the past, I think, and then he saw… I can’t even remember it. We’ll move on. Long story short, let me replace that story with a better story.
One of our bishops came here from Africa (I’ve told this story many times, but it always impacts me), and he said, “I really pity you people in the United States of America.” And it’s like, why? You celebrate under a tree. You don’t even have a building to worship under. And he said, “I pity you because when you pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ you don’t even mean it. We have to pray that. We have to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ otherwise we don’t eat.” And we forget that all of our provision comes from the Lord. We want to provide for ourselves. We want to go out and get our things rather than looking for God: “What do you want in this situation?”
And of course it’s not just about food. Most of us have three square meals a day easily, and it’s not something that you have to fight over or be tempted about. Maybe it’s about hunger because you’re lonely and you need to connect with good brothers and sisters in the church. But you know what’s easier? Turning on Netflix and having your best friends greet you in the theme song. There are ways that we try to fill our physical desires, our spiritual desires and cravings, outside of the plan of God. And so I want to challenge you, as we move from fear to trust: when you feel those things, don’t go for the easy answer this Lent. Ask God what he wants you to do. Because man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. If you haven’t heard the word of the Lord in your life, then you might be spiritually starving and you just don’t know it. You can’t live without the word of God in your life.
I want to give one more challenge here. So it’s: go to confession this Lent. And my other challenge is: read the Bible at some point during Lent. I gave myself a challenge, because, man, it’s so easy to go days without even opening up the word of God. I was like, “I’m just going to read the book of Romans this Lent, a chapter a day,” which means I’ll get through it a couple times, a little more than two times. And I will tell you, there’s something about right now, this moment, and I believe this is for our whole church: you open that Bible, you pick a book to read, and just ask God to reveal something to you. I’ve been so encouraged, on a level that I feel like my Bible study hasn’t been in months, maybe years. I opened up the Bible and all of a sudden words were popping off the page, and I was just being encouraged again and again. And I say all that not that you have to have these ecstatic experiences every time you open the Bible, but if you feed yourself this Lent out of the Bible, then when the temptation comes… Jesus answered directly from Scripture. How did he know to respond to the temptation? Because he had Scripture inside of him.
I’ll say one more thing about that. I heard a pastor say this once. People would come up to him and say, “Man, why would I read the Bible? I don’t even remember what I read yesterday.” And the pastor said, “Well, I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but it still fed me.” There’s something about just getting in the word and having it inside of you. There’s a longing in our hearts to connect with the God of the universe, and that’s one of the easiest ways that we can do that.
VI. Pain Is Not Your Enemy 17:21
Let’s move on. Next temptation:
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Matt 4.5–6
So this one’s a really complicated temptation, in my opinion, because I think there’s a lot of stuff going on. He takes him out to the holy city, has him stand on the highest point in the temple. And the temple is the residence of God, and he’s the Son of God, and basically the devil’s implying, “If you’re the Son of God…” The temptation is implying, “Then you should be the head of everything. You should be the head of the worship of the Lord. You’re the point.” And we find out that he is. Jesus is the point. All of the Law and the Prophets pointed to Jesus. But then the temptation says, “Well, in Scripture it says he will command his angels concerning you, they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. So throw yourself off. You’ll be fine.”
But in the subtlety here a couple things are happening. First of all, the Scripture is being twisted. Although there are many promises in Scripture where God says that he will defend us and protect us (one of the most famous is in Psalm 91: “A thousand will fall at your left and ten thousand at your right, but it shall not come near you” (Ps 91.7)), he’s twisting the Scriptures, because he’s saying that you will not strike your foot against the stone. He’s implying in this temptation that God will keep us from all harm. And that’s never been one of the promises of God. Because do you know what? Pain is not your enemy. The things that we go through in our life, the suffering, is actually something that God uses to create in us the hope and the character and the perseverance that he’s creating (Rom 5.3–4).
Now let me say this. It’s hard to walk this line, because there is a promise where you can rely on God. He will rescue you, he will save you, he will heal you, he will protect you. But that doesn’t mean… It’s almost like with my son Rowan. In our house there are hard edges, and some of them we put little protectors on so he doesn’t hurt himself. But we didn’t wrap the whole place in bubble wrap. So he runs around, and he gets bumps and bruises, and he hurts himself quite a lot. And it’s fine, because he’s within a wider context of protection for us. We don’t give him a knife to play with. But we allow him to go through his life and learn from his injuries. In fact, some of the arguments that Haley and I have had (not serious ones, but some that we talk about) are that I’m always saying, “Yeah, let’s let him climb the highest thing and push off the farthest thing,” because I want him to learn from his pain. I want him to grow. I want him to adventure. And I know that the little pain, the bumps and bruises, are not his enemy. But I also don’t let intruders come into our house and rifle through our stuff. I also know the people who are with him. I’m also supervising the situation.
And so we are like Rowan. We run into the table and we hurt ourselves, and we look at our parents and we say, “What the heck? I thought you were supposed to protect me from all pain.” And it’s just not what we do as parents. We let them experience pain. And that’s part of what God does in our life. Yeah, he has a hedge of protection. Even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you do not need to fear evil (Ps 23.4), because ultimately God will protect you and bring you through to eternal glory and happiness and joy like we have never known. But, man, there are some bumps and bruises along the way, and he’s willing to let us go through that. Part of that’s because he gave us free will. And you know what? When you give a bunch of people free will, they’re going to hurt each other. And he’s not going to take that from us.
But the promise of God is deeper than protection from all harm. The promise of God is redemption of all suffering. The promise of God is that in the end all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. And even the most painful experience in your entire life (and I could list a few) will be transformed in the resurrection of life and glory. No pain that you experience here will be unanswered in the joy of the Lord. That’s kind of a hard one, and I don’t want to go too long on this and just hang out here.
But I want to say one more thing here. There’s this thing with fathers and mothers, where mothers, their instinct is to nourish and protect. And it’s a great instinct, and it’s super crucial, because when we’re little babies, you know what we are? The most vulnerable creatures in the entire world. We need protection and nourishment. But you know what fathers are for? Fathers are also for sending out and preparing and training up. And that tension is meant to be there between the mother and the father. So when Haley’s like, “I don’t think we should let Rowan do that,” and I’m like, “Yeah, let’s push him out there,” that tension helps find that balance between the protection he needs and the sending out and the training up. And there’s a reason we call God our Father and not our Mother. We call him the Father because he’s training you, he’s building you up, he’s sending you out. That’s what he does. And we call the church our mother, because the church nourishes, protects, builds us up, so that God can empower us and send us out. Just an analogy to think about, in a world that doesn’t like the term father and mother, or men and women. So let’s keep that in mind. There’s a reason for these things. It’s built into the fabric of reality. There’s a reason we call God our Father.
VII. If You Are the Son of God 23:18
So let’s go on to this last… Well, let’s see Jesus’ answer. What does he say?
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Matt 4.7
I want to focus for a second on the underlying temptation underneath all of this. Throughout every temptation that Jesus has, the thing that gets repeated is, “If you are the Son of God.” And this is the reason, this is the kernel in the middle of the temptations, that I think makes it the most hopeful story in the Gospels, outside of, let’s say, the resurrection. And the hope is that the promise of God for Jesus in baptism, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” is the promise that we receive in our baptism, and that our baptism is actually a participation in the baptism of Jesus.
So when we experience the temptations (say, suffering), when we go through difficulty and we are tempted to despair, when we come to a place where we have deep hungers and longings, physical, spiritual, emotional, that feel like they’re unfulfilled, and we feel like God’s not providing, or maybe there’s a bill that hasn’t been paid, the temptation is to despair, to test God, to try to accomplish it on our own strength. The thing we have to remember is: we are sons and daughters of God. He is well pleased in us. If there’s anything you walk away from this sermon hearing, hear this: you are a beloved child of God, and he loves you, and he is well pleased with you.
And I know there are people in this room who think that can’t be true. There’s something in you that says, “But I’m not good enough. But I didn’t do this, or I didn’t read my Bible, or I didn’t go to church, or I did this bad thing.” I want you to know, guess what? God loves you, knowing all of that. He knows the sins you committed yesterday, today, and the sins you will commit till the day you die. And yet, even in the midst of that, in the just massive amounts of suffering and difficulty that we see in this world, he still loves you. He still sent his Son to die for you.
And so when you do enter these temptations, that’s the one thing that the devil would love to convince you isn’t true. He wants you to think that God doesn’t love you, or that God isn’t able to save you and provide for you. But that is just bogus. So this Lent, as you press into these disciplines, whatever you did, if you gave up things for fasting, if you added discipline, if you didn’t do anything at all, just remember that God loves you, that he wants to empower you to become like his Son Jesus, who overcame the temptations and eventually… now he’s enthroned in heavenly places and experiencing the glory of God. There’s a promise in there for us.
VIII. Doing It Your Own Way 25:30
So let’s talk about this last temptation here, and then I have a little story, and we’ll close with that.
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Matt 4.8–9
Basically, my interpretation of this temptation is that it comes from what you see throughout Jesus’ ministry. When Jesus heals people, all of a sudden the crowd wants to take him and make him king. We’ve seen that again and again. Jesus performs miracles, the crowd gets stirred up: “This is our Messiah! Let’s go make him king!” And every time there’s a temptation for Jesus to use the power and influence that he has to save a lot of people, to do something good, to save his people who are oppressed by the Romans, to be enthroned, and to use worldly power and influence to limit suffering, to do all the good that Jesus is doing. Basically, what Jesus is tempted to do is to do it his own way. That’s the temptation here: “Bow down and worship me.”
In our life it looks like, “Well, you should do it your way.” You’re starting a project that you feel like God’s called you to, and you don’t even ask him to help you. You just go about it, and you pick up the load, and you try to do it on your own strength. God wants to be intimately involved in every aspect of our life. Don’t fall into the temptation of trying to do it all on your own power and in your own way.
And the other aspect of this temptation is that Satan had no power to deliver on that promise: “All this I will give you. If you just do this, I’ll give it to you.” I think maybe the clearest example that we see in our real world is in politics. We see again and again people enter into politics, and if you follow their career path, they just get sucked right in: “If you just do it this way, then you can have your deal that you want. If you just compromise on your values, then you can get this.” And it’s easy in politics, because we all have an opinion about that. We all see that. But we need to find a way to bring that into our own mind and say, “Where is it that I’m compromising on my values, doing it my own way rather than looking for God’s way?”
And Jesus recognizes it, and he says:
10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Matt 4.10
So the problem here that Jesus identified is that that’s idolatry. When you try to do it your own way, when you serve your own needs and your own desires, ultimately it’s idolatry, because you should only worship the Lord your God.
The other time Jesus responded this way, which makes it very crystal clear, is the same temptation, when Jesus is telling his disciples the Son of Man will be lifted up and crucified in Jerusalem, and Peter goes, “No way! Over my dead body! That’s not happening. We’re going to do it our way. We’re going to take over. You’re wrong, Jesus. You’re the one that’s going to be the king. You’re the one that’s going to have all the power and all the glory. You’re going to save Israel.” And Jesus recognizes it the same way, and he says, “Get behind me, Satan!” It’s the same response. Because he knew it: in the beginning of his ministry, when he was tempted in the desert, God allowed him to face that temptation, so that when Peter said that, Jesus already knew the answer: “Get behind me, Satan! You’re not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt 16.22–23). So you have to resist the temptation to do it your own way.
IX. Building a Man 29:31
Let me tell you one more story, and then we’ll close with this, because I think it highlights what I think God is doing in this Lent. There’s this podcast that I listened to, and this guy owned some auto supply shops, and now he’s doing a podcast. So it’s kind of a weird transition, but you’ll see what happens. He owns these auto supply stores, and he’s a mechanic, never graduated high school, kind of just an everyman guy, and he’s doing his thing, but he’s making his business work. And then God says, “Hey, you see that gas station that’s closing down? I want you to buy that, and I want you to open up a gas station, and it’ll expand your business,” whatever. And at this point in his business there was no way he could do that. There’s just no way. He doesn’t have the money, he doesn’t have the manpower. He’s never run a gas station before. He’s only done an auto supply store. What does he even do? But, “Okay, fine, God, I’ll do it. If God’s telling me, then it’ll help my business, so let’s do it.”
So he goes through, he gets the loan, he gets it all worked out, the guy comes down on the price, this miraculous thing. He gets the gas station, and he gets it up and running, and for about a decade his finances went from okay to awful. That gas station was a money suck. It was terrible. He couldn’t get it to work. It wasn’t ever making any profit, ever. And it did everything that he was afraid of. It put a stress on his business. It did all this stuff. And for 10 years he’s like, “What do I do?”
Finally, one day, he’s coming home. It’s in the middle of winter. He’s up in way northern California, so they got freezing temperatures. And the lights are off at his house, and he’s like, “Oh no, what’s going on? My wife and kids are supposed to be here.” And he walks in, and he sees these blanket forts, and the kids are all playing, and there are some candles up. And the wife jumps up, and she goes, “Oh no, you’re home early!” And she runs around to the transformer and she turns on the electricity, and the heat kicks on and the light comes on. And she says, “I didn’t want you to know, but we don’t have enough money for the electric bill, so I’ve just been turning it off during the day, and we’ve been playing, making the kids think we’re camping out.” And it broke his heart. Could you imagine not being able to provide heat for your children? It’s really relevant to us today, as we look at the terrible situation in Texas, where these people are suffering in the cold. And she was voluntarily taking that on and making the best of it, because they just couldn’t make ends meet.
And he called out to God, and he said, “God, why’d you have to make me buy the gas station? What’s the point?” And God said, “Well, you thought I was building a gas station. I’m building a man.” God used that difficulty that he led him into to transform his life. And from that moment things started to shift. He got out of that business, and now he runs an international ministry organization, one of the most popular people in ministry. He’s so successful. He has everything he needs. But you know what? He couldn’t have gotten there if he didn’t have those 10 years where he followed God into the wilderness and experienced trial after trial, and finally he broke down and said, “God, what are you doing?”
But the point is, God’s not looking to build what you think he’s looking to build. Now, he’ll call you to do things, and he may bless your business and bless your purposes, and God willing, let it be so. But when you encounter trials, let’s not jump immediately to recrimination. Let’s not accuse God: “Why did you leave me here?” Instead, let’s ask God, “What are you doing? Open my eyes to see what you’re doing.” Because I promise you, it’s better than you can know. And he’s so much more concerned with building you up than he is with all the other stuff that we stress about. Your life is in his hands. He loves you. You’re his kid. He’s going to bring you to completion. The work that he’s begun in you, he will bring to completion (Phil 1.6).
So my hope this Lent is that the chains of doubt and deceit and despair would fall away as we lay our burdens at the foot of the cross. Lent is a march towards death that we may have life. And God wants us to know his love. He wants to draw us near, and he wants to fulfill his purposes in us. Amen.