You may not know but Kim and I really enjoy the preaching of TD Jakes. We watch him on TV and have bought several of his sermons on DVD. In my opinion, he is one of the best preachers I've ever heard. My thoughts tonight come from a sermon that I watched tonight.
Are any of you going through tough situations, tough battles that you are doing the best you can to do what is right and hold on to Jesus but you just don't know how you're going to finish? You may feel emotionally drained, spiritually used up, and physically just plain tired. I don't know if this applies to you but if you are in this situation now, you should know that Jesus was there too. Mark 1:9-13 briefly tells how Jesus experiences the pinnacle of his ministry where he went from being Jesus to being Jesus Christ. He was just baptized and God proclaims Jesus as His son and then the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove. So in this moment the three members of the God-head were together.
In an instant, the Holy Spirit that had just came to Jesus like a gentle dove was now driving Him to the wilderness to fast for 40 days. Matthew 4:2 tells us that when the 40 days were up, Satan came to Jesus and tempted Him. So Jesus has just put Himself through nothing less than 40 days of torture preparing Himself for temptation and building discipline for when the devil comes to tempt Him.
Where was God during this time? The bible doesn't speak of God ministering to his Son during these 40 days. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are times in our Christian walk when God will remove Himself from us.
Have you ever felt like you were at the greatest moment of your Christian walk just to find yourself smack-dab in the middle of the biggest test of your life? God does not temp us but he will test us. How can we grow if we are never tested? What good is a weeks worth of football practice if there isn't a game on Friday? Why go to basketball camps and play AAU if there isn't a game to be played? Most of our time is or should be spent preparing for these tests. But what happens when the test is over?
When Jesus' test was over He was tired, exhausted, malnourished, and a physical and emotional wreck. Do you think Jesus went without food for 40 days and wasn't hungry? Do you think He went 40 days without food and didn't waste away to nothing? Jesus was a human just like us. At the end of those 40 days, He was beat down. But then what happened? Matthew 4:11 happened; "Then the devil left Him and angels came and attended Him".
When Jesus was spent, when he went through the test and came out on top and had nothing left to give, God sent angels to attend to Him. God will do the same for you if you hold on through the test.
Today, I encourage you to hold on and don't give up. You keep fighting and when you don't have anything left just hold on because the angels are coming!
God loves you and I do too!
