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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Thank you for listening to your Daily Bible Verse,

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Speaker 1: the podcast that examines one verse each day to learn

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Speaker 1: more about God and his will for our lives. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Kyle Norman. After a brief message from one

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Speaker 1: of our sponsors, we will begin our Lenten series, God

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Speaker 1: Meets You in the Wilderness with a discussion of today's verse.

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Speaker 1: Today's verse can be found in Matthew Chapter four, Verse one.

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Speaker 1: Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness

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Speaker 1: to be tempted by the devil. In my book Alive,

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Speaker 1: Loved and Free, I talk about the moments of deep

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Speaker 1: discouragement in my spiritual life. For close to a year,

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Speaker 1: I deeply struggled. My wife was going through cancer treatments,

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Speaker 1: and I desperately wanted to show people that I was

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Speaker 1: managing well. But I wasn't. I felt spiritually adrift. My

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Speaker 1: prayer life dried up, my energy became depleted, and as

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Speaker 1: if it weren't enough, all of the temptations and the

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Speaker 1: faults that I am prone to will they seem to

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Speaker 1: come at me with a force and a veracity that

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Speaker 1: I hadn't experienced before. It felt like an onslaught, and

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Speaker 1: there I was standing in my own personal wilderness alone.

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Speaker 1: At least that's how it felt. Wilderness experiences can feel

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Speaker 1: like that. They can feel isolating and frightening. We can

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Speaker 1: feel overtaken by whatever we are struggling through, as well

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Speaker 1: as the temptations that befall us. And in that place,

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Speaker 1: the only prayer that we can sometimes muster, if we

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Speaker 1: can pray at all, is Jesus. Why aren't you doing something?

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Speaker 1: Why isn't Jesus liberating us from this frustrating experience? Why

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Speaker 1: isn't our savior saving us from this time of trial? Now,

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Speaker 1: these prayers aren't wrong by any means. In fact, the

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Speaker 1: Psalms give us license to pray these prayers with as

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Speaker 1: much force and feeling that we can muster. But here's

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Speaker 1: the truth that we can never miss. Jesus is our

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Speaker 1: savior not because he avoided the wilderness and so calls

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Speaker 1: us to do the same. No, he is our savior

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Speaker 1: because he journeyed through the wilderness. Just think about this.

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Speaker 1: Jesus is baptized by John in the River Jordan, and

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Speaker 1: he's heralded as the son of God, the Messiah. He's

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Speaker 1: the one who will enact God's kingdom upon the earth.

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Speaker 1: All of heaven and earth point to him, and the

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Speaker 1: Holy Spirit comes upon him in the form of a dove,

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Speaker 1: testifying that Jesus is the incarnate one. But no sooner

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Speaker 1: is he up from the water than the very Spirit

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Speaker 1: leads Jesus into the wilderness. When we read that Jesus

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Speaker 1: was led by the spirit into the wilderness, the word

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Speaker 1: used for lead is more aptly translated as thrust or

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Speaker 1: drove forcefully. Jesus enters the wilderness of temptation and struggle,

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Speaker 1: and he's there for forty days and forty nights, and

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Speaker 1: he's tempted by the devil the whole time. Jesus begins

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Speaker 1: his ministry with the time in the wilderness. He steps

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Speaker 1: into this role as Messiah by undergoing temptation and spiritual assault.

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Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't remain aloof or separated, because this is why

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Speaker 1: he came. Jesus came not to stand idly by while

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Speaker 1: we struggle. He had come to sit on the throne

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Speaker 1: of ease and complacency. Jesus came to enter into the

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Speaker 1: struggles of our lives and to take them up in

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Speaker 1: his life. Jesus walks where we walk. He felt what

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Speaker 1: we so often feel. Reflecting on this truth many years later,

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Speaker 1: the writer of Hebrew says that we do not have

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Speaker 1: a great high priest who is unable to sympathize with

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Speaker 1: our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted just as

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Speaker 1: we are, but was without sin. And what that means

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Speaker 1: is this, we are not abandoned in our wilderness times.

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Speaker 1: We are not alone having to muscle our way through it.

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Speaker 1: What Jesus in the wilderness shows us is that Jesus

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Speaker 1: is present in our wilderness. See, we often see wilderness

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Speaker 1: as a time of attack, a time of struggle and temptation.

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Speaker 1: It's a time where we feel overwrought by our frailty.

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Speaker 1: And whether we're going through a physical time of struggle

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Speaker 1: or one which is more internal, we often feel that

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Speaker 1: we are battling unseen forces. And there's truth of this,

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Speaker 1: of course. The early desert fathers and mothers deep in

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Speaker 1: Church history, saw the desert as a place of spiritual battle,

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Speaker 1: but that battle could be waged because the wilderness was

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Speaker 1: also a place of encounter. The wilderness was a place

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Speaker 1: where we could uncover the presence of the mighty God,

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Speaker 1: and we see this all throughout scripture. Israel wanders in

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Speaker 1: the wilderness for forty years, and in that time there

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Speaker 1: were many struggles. But in that wilderness and along their journey,

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Speaker 1: they also uncover the truth about the God that they followed.

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Speaker 1: But there was no time along their journey that God

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Speaker 1: was not with them. My own time in the wilderness

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Speaker 1: felt long and dark at moments, and it was a

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Speaker 1: time that was hard to walk through. But it was

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Speaker 1: also a time of profound intimacy where I uncovered a

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Speaker 1: depth of Christ's love and compassion that I hadn't yet experienced. See.

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Speaker 1: As hard as a wilderness experience can be, we can

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Speaker 1: survive it because somewhere we have an opportunity to meet

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Speaker 1: the Living God. So how can you turn to Jesus

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Speaker 1: in your wilderness? How can you invite Him into your

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Speaker 1: struggle or your temptation? Walking in a wilderness. It doesn't

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Speaker 1: mean that you've lost your faith. It doesn't mean that

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Speaker 1: you're abandoned by God. It means that you have an

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Speaker 1: opportunity to meet Jesus in a new and a profound way,

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Speaker 1: and in a way that will help you grasp just

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Speaker 1: how strong His love is for you. Who a