Forty days of fasting.
Forty days of prayer.
Forty days of weakness and vulnerability?
The last person recorded in the Bible to have spent 40 days in a fast was Jesus (Matt 4:2), and at the end of the 40 days, he was exhausted and hungry, so the devil swooped in to tempt him.
Big mistake.
You see, the devil saw Jesus tired and hungry and mistook this for weakness and vulnerability. What he did not know was that although this seemed so physically, spiritually, Jesus was strengthened, and his soul filled. This spiritual strength was what enabled Jesus to respond to the devil and resist the temptations posed to him (Matt 4:2-11).
Lent can be likened to being an experience in the wilderness. During Lent, like Jesus, we find ourselves exhausted and hungry as we fast, abstain and give up things we love for the sake of a deeper communion with the Father. We fast, and grow tired, we give up certain pleasures and find ourselves bored and hungry, seeking things to fill our time, and that is when the language of the wilderness becomes louder.
That is when the voice that spoke to Jesus many years ago starts to speak and begins to propose “helpful” suggestions; it offers “food” to satisfy the hunger we feel, and the comforts of this world, it presents to us for our rest. It comes through our friends and neighbours and is masked as being for our wellbeing and best interests. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Christ Jesus (1 Cor 15:57), because like Jesus many years ago, though hungry, and exhausted, our souls are nourished, and we have an answer in the Word of God for every proposition made.
So, when we find ourselves in the wilderness, we are encouraged to demolish arguments and persuasions that elevate themselves against the knowledge of Christ (2 Cor 10:5); “helpful” conversations and advice that are in fact deceitful and lead to sin (Ex 32:1-2, Num 13:31 – 14:4). As we grow tired in the flesh, but stronger in the spirit, we take imaginations captive and make them obedient to Christ. Those thoughts that we think are not so bad, we weigh against the Word of God. The conversations that present as intellectual but seek to draw us from communion with the Father, we oppose and refute by the knowledge of God.
It is when we are exhausted, we must be alert; it is in our hunger for food, we must discern what is a trap. It is in our longing for the desires of this world that we must recognise the One from whom all things flow, and take a firm stand against the devil.
It is in the wilderness that grumbling, murmuring and arguments that pull us away from the glory of God, arise (Ex 17:3).
And it is in the wilderness that we must quell them. I pray that we are nourished and strengthened this Lenten season. Amen
By Sis. Jennifer Aduro