There in the wilderness Jesus endured the testing. He holds on to his understanding of who he is now and what he is to do in obedience to God and will not abandon, forsake, or reduce that vision of his life. He will not turn his back on the revelation of his baptism as the agent of God's love and forgiveness even if it includes the cross and death. Jesus passes the first encounter with the temptation and there finds the comfort and ministry of the presence of God's servants. The angels come and minister to him. For there is a celebration in the Christian faith for each and all of us where we resist the temptation to forsake or betray the destiny that God has given for each of us. There is a sense of joy and victory when we know that we have faced a major challenge to forsake who we are and to remain faithful to our own particular mission and purpose.
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Satan leaves,but it does not mean the battle is over. There will be other times and other nights when in the Garden Jesus will be tempted to abandon the God given identity and work. There will be other times when the testing comes as to whether or not he will remain faithful to his calling or whether he will settle for something different or less.
And that is our reality as well as we continue as Christian disciples in the conflict with good and evil. For there is a constant testing of whether or not we will remain true to our calling as a children of God in our own baptisms. For in all kinds of directions there come the temptation to give up on ourselves and to try something different. The temptation to deny who we know ourselves to be and to try to be something different than we are. When you hear your friends say about something you are wearing. "That's not really you." So much of what we have all around us is the siren call of the testing for us to settle for something less than what God hopes for us to become. So much of the world around us invites us to some easier path which means that we settle for something less than our best. Why study to become informed about a subject, you can pass the test with a just surface knowledge? Like Jesus we have been called by God to be children of God and called to live a life that is full of his power and glory, joy and peace, but the wilderness is all around us all the time, and there is the testing of whether or not we will continue to be obedient and faithful to that glory vision of ourselves as God sees us or whether we will turn away, claim it is not possible for us, God really wasn't talking about me, it just not my style, I could never be that so why try. But like Jesus and the children of Israel where we continue to struggle and to resist we discover that God is in the wilderness as well, in the midst of the struggle and as we remain faithful to the calling, to the vision, to the image of ourselves that God has for us, God ministers to us by his angels and brings us more and more into conformity with that image He has given us.
Thanks be unto God who keeps us in our testing.
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Rick Brand is Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Henderson, NC.
