Rarified Air to the Bogs of Despair

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

 

“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.”

Matthew 3:16-17; 4:1-2

 

 

Has this been your experience –

A mountaintop experience with God is followed by a walk through a valley?

So often that can be the case.

I think of Elijah with a great victory over the pagan priests on Mt. Carmel followed by his hiding in fear for his life from Jezebel.

In today’s text we find Jesus having endured 40 days of fasting followed by the devil coming to him in the wilderness to tempt Him.

This was after the wonderful words of His Father declaring His love for His Son and His pleasure in Him.

Too often we believe – or are led to believe – that life is one mountaintop experience after another with God.

But it is also in the valleys where trust in the Lord can truly be strengthened.

As we walk in the valleys, we learn a reliance on the Lord we may feel we do not need on the mountaintop (though that would be a wrong assumption).

As we continue to walk with the Lord don’t run from those valley experiences.

Learn to draw even nearer to the Lord in these seasons.

We know the words David penned in Psalm 23 but they are worth remembering here –

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil, for you are with me;

your rod and your staff, they comfort me”

The ‘valleys’ of life will surely come.

Do you walk through them with the assurance of God by your side or do you wallow in a sense of abandonment and self-pity?

Jesus moved from His baptism in the Jordan and those wonderful words of encouragement to a time of testing in the wilderness.

He knew the Father’s love as surely in that time of testing as He knew it coming up out of the waters of the Jordan.

That same assurance is ours!

Walk in that assurance today whether that walk has you on the top of a mountain or in a valley!