Ain't no vally low enough

Some short thoughts on Luke 4… Part 1.

I’m going to do something a bit different here. Instead of writing a few paragraphs about what I’m learning, I’m going to throw out some bullet points about thing that jumped out at me and let you come to some of your own conclusions. I’ll add more about the following verses to this as the days go by. Let me know how you see God applying this stuff in your life.

Luke 4: The Temptation of Jesus

1. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert,

-The Spirit led Jesus into a desert. How often to we mistake our desert seasons for a work of the enemy and try to avoid them rather than asking God: “What are you trying to teach me during this time?”

-We learn more in struggle than in success. Learning to live Godly in the dry seasons teaches us that God is trust worthy; He will come through for you as you follow Him. You’ll never truly understand that God is enough until He really is all that you have.

-The desert seasons often follow great spiritual moments. Expect it. Prepare your heart for it.

-The desert seasons are not always punishments for wrong living. Often they are a testing and a completion of what God gave you in the spiritually intimate season you just walked out of. Trust in the night what you learned in the light.

-Often when God seems to pull back is when we tend to realize our need for Him and press in. Absence make the heart grow fonder, but only when we persue a commitment to love in the (seeming) absence of our loved one's presence.  Do we love Him enough to love Him faithfully even when we don't seem to "feel" His love?

My Thoughts:
It’s nice having a safety harness as you climb. But my guess is you’ll never truly climb with out fear until you’ve fallen and that safety harness catches you. You can know in your head all the details about the strength of that harness but you won’t full trust it until you’ve been caught a few times.

I think we are like that with Christ. Most Christians can talk about their faith in Christ. The question is what do we do when he say’s “Let go, trust me.” How do we react when He seems to pull the blessing back and we walk a season of living with seemingly nothing more than the memories of the things He did. No emotional reward to our worship. No physical reward to our sacrifice. No substance to feed our hunger.

Do we shrink back? Do we question His love? Do compromise our faithfulness in response to our questions about His?

Or do we trust. Do we endure. Do we seek Him all the more diligently. Reality is, he said he would never leave us or forsake us. He never said we wouldn’t feel forsaken, but feelings are a poor judge of spiritual realities. Our deserts aren’t always a lack of God in our life, but often our greatest opportunities to show our trust in Him.

Have you ever been through a desert season? What did you learn? What brought you through? What happened in you life as result?