Does God Still Care for Me in the Wilderness?
It’s so wonderful to feel blessed. It’s even better to not just feel blessed but to KNOW that you are blessed! If the Creator of the universe speaks blessing over you, then you do KNOW that you are blessed! At Jesus baptism, God the Creator, God the Father, pronounced a glorious blessing over His Son J also spoke identity over Him. In Mark 1:11 New American Standard Bible, we read:
…and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”
Almost like when we boast about our children to our friends, God spoke this blessing over His beloved Son in front of a large crowd, so all could hear, saying He was well-pleased with Him. Well-pleased G2106 means “to think well of, approve, be well pleased, take pleasure.” Father God took pleasure in His only begotten Son. I know this same feeling, when my husband and I take pleasure in our children, simply the fact that they are ours (well, on loan from God!). We look at them and smile, enjoying who God made them to be. When you realize that God takes pleasure in you-well, let it sink in, bask in it, like when you bask in the sun and let its warmth penetrate your skin. Yet after God spoke over Jesus that He was HIS SON, confirming His identity and blessing Him, in the very next verse, we read in Matthew 1:12 NASB:
Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.
Why would God speak a blessing over His Son, then let the Holy Spirit “impel” Him into the wilderness? “Impel” G1544 means “to cast out, drive out, to expel a person from society, to compel one to depart, to draw out with force, to eject” and comes from a root word meaning “to throw or to thrust”. So God the Holy Spirit drove, cast, expelled, thrust Jesus into the wilderness. Doesn’t that seem to be the opposite of what a loving Father would do to His beloved Son, who He just said He was pleased with? Yet, God did just that. Perhaps the blessing that God the Father spoke over Jesus, was to prepare Him to stand strong in the wilderness, so that He would know for certain His identity as the Son of God in the midst of the temptations that He was about to face.
So many times when we are in the wilderness, things aren’t going well, or we feel like God is far away, we think that God does not care about us or love us. But the Holy Spirit (God) drove Jesus, God’s MUCH BELOVED Son, the Darling of heaven, His one and only begotten Son who He was well-pleased with-into the wilderness. He literally threw Him there. This was done to God’s Son. If you are in the wilderness at this moment, do not believe the lie that you are there because you are not well-pleasing to God. Be reassured that God can still be well-pleased with you and love you, even though He is allowing you to be in the wilderness and even though He may have thrust you there. He may be thrusting you there, so He can bring you to a place of victory over the devil, just like He did with Jesus!
Don’t let the enemy rob you of your identity in Christ! We let the enemy hijack our identity way too easily. Satan’s aim is to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10), so if we let our guard down even a little, we need to know that the enemy is going to be right there to snatch it away. Don’t let Him do that! This is why we need to STAND FIRM in who we are in Christ. This is why we need to get in His Word and KNOW what He says about us deep our hearts. The truth of our identity in God needs to be firmly planted there. When the storms come and the winds blow, we need a house that can stand strong on a firm foundation, on the ROCK, on CHRIST (Matthew 7:24).
So mom’s
BUILD YOUR IDENTITY ON THE ROCK, SO IT WILL STAND STRONG.
In His Love,
Suzanne
Mom Morsels 