Journey Through the DesertSample

The Journey Begins

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” (Matthew 4:1-4)

It usually starts with a question. The tempter is cunning and will slither in with a seemingly harmless question.

Remember the Garden of Eden? Picture Eve minding her business, and the serpent comes with a seemingly innocent but devious question. “Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

Did He?

Now, the enemy is here once again for an epic face-off with the Son of God. Christ has been in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. He’s tired, hungry, and on His own. Or so the tempter thought.

So here we are, about to take a journey through the desert. Could it be that the desert is not only a place of testing but also a place that strips away all pretenses, a place that refines us, humbles us? It reveals what is in our hearts and if we will keep God’s commandments.

The desert is the place where we get a chance to answer the question: Do you trust the goodness of God? This is the heart of the matter that began in the Garden; if the enemy can cause us to doubt the Father’s goodness and His good plans for us, he gets an opportunity to plant a seed.

Over the next eight days, join me on this journey through the desert places.

We come out of the desert different from when we went in. The temptations that await us there can determine our destiny.