The Journey Through Lent

** Please note due due technical difficulties, only a partial recording of the sermon was made this week.  We apologize for the inconvenience.**  This week, we started our journey through the season of Lent. Lent is a period of forty days leading up to Easter, not counting Sundays, when we remember our mortality, reflect on our relationship with God, and consider changes we can make in our lives that will help us grow closer to God. This can be a challenging time because it requires an honest self-assessment that might not be very flattering. Are there times when we are willing to compromise our principles so that we can achieve a personal goal? Do we dedicate ourselves to our career, status, or financial comfort at the expense of our devotion to God? Do we negotiate with God, offering to do those things we know God wants us to do deep in our heart only if God takes care of our personal requests?

These are the kinds of challenges Jesus dealt with after his baptism in the Jordan river. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus was led into the desert where he fasted for forty days and was then tested by the devil. He was offered bread after the long fast, authority over the kingdoms of the world, and an opportunity to prove he was God’s son by testing God’s resolve to keep him safe. Of course, Jesus passed each challenge presented to him by the devil during this journey in the wilderness, but the devil never gave up. Similarly, we are constantly tested, but we do not have the wisdom of God as Jesus did, so we sometimes fail our test. Each year during Lent we take a forty-day journey to consider where we may have gone wrong in our challenges and think about how we could do a little better in the year ahead. Join us this Sunday as we look at the ways Jesus was successful in his journey through the desert and what we might learn from him.