Day 14 – Sustained!

2020 VISION | Day 14 | Sustained!

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness 

to be tempted by the devil. 

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 

The tempter came to him and said, 

“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: 

‘Man shall not live on bread alone, 

but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’”

(Matthew 4:1-4, NIV).

Just days after Jesus had been affirmed by His Father at baptism, the devil came to Him to tempt Him. He was alone and hungry during a time of fasting for forty days, and the devil tempted him: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” But Jesus responded with the word of God from Deuteronomy 8:3: “Human beings do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Through the years, even from my childhood, I have seen the promise of God to sustain us played out in my life. In my adult life I have walked through divorce, loss of loved ones, and cancer, to name the big ones. Each event was unique and required varying degrees of trust and casting the care on God, but I experienced the miracle of His sustaining grace in every situation. As we enter a time of fasting, the anticipation is enough to get us through the initial moments of hunger, but as the days roll by, the excitement begins to fade into the dull ache of lack and de-sire. Much like our everyday difficulties, it’s easy for our attention to narrow in on our uncomfortable circumstances. In the passage Jesus quotes, however, Moses explains to the Israelites the meaning behind their hunger: everything we think sustains us is in fact only a sign pointing us to the sustaining presence of God that carries us through all of life’s wanderings.

Prayer: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God”(Psalm 42:1-2)?