We see in this familiar passage two of the foundational stories of the Gospel: Christ’s blessing by God, followed very closely by his temptation. These are also the two universal realities of the spiritual life: both blessings and trials.
After his baptism, Jesus saw the Spirit descending on him like a dove and heard the voice of his Father from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son; with whom I am well-pleased.” Jesus experienced his Father’s blessing and the life-giving gift of the Holy Spirit to strengthen and guide him in his new ministry. And a few years later, near the end of his ministry as he was turning towards Jerusalem and the ordeal awaiting him there, while praying on the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus heard his Father’s voice once again, saying, “This is my beloved Son; with him I am well pleased” (Mt. 17:5). Try to imagine what it must have felt like for Jesus to receive that affirmation once again, especially at such a critical time. There’s great power and life in a blessing.
Randy and his sister Lisa were both committed Christians, but one day in sharing openly together they each admitted to feelings of spiritual anxiety and unsettledness. Their father, Leo, was a farmer who had always been hard-working, church-going and reliably committed to his family and his wife of 45 years. Not one to show much emotion, he led by example. But when attending a men’s conference, he heard about the importance of blessing his children.
Shortly afterwards, Randy and Lisa shared with their parents about their sense of restlessness and how it was affecting their relationship with God. Randy also mentioned his chronic stomach problems and his suspicion that he was under spiritual attack of some kind. That’s when his father suddenly stood up. There was a determined look in his eyes when he said, “I know what I need to do.”
Leo placed his hands on his son first and began to pray for him, asking God to forgive him for not being the emotionally expressive father Randy needed, and to redeem the years that had been lost for them. And he gave Randy his heartfelt blessing with a more tender expression of his love than he ever had. Then he prayed a similar, equally sincere and powerful prayer for his daughter Lisa. Both of them were changed and healed by that experience, receiving a new sense of inner peace and belovedness.
Whether or not you’ve ever received a similar blessing on a human level, we know that our heavenly Father loves us just as he does Jesus, as his beloved children. I believe that when God sees us, he sees his Son in us, and he loves us for who we really are in Jesus, imperfect in our humanity, but becoming transformed into the image of Christ.
And vital to that transformation are life’s trials and testing. You’ve probably heard the saying that “God loves us just as we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way.” Hand-in-hand with God’s blessing there is always testing to deepen our bonds of intimate love and trust. Those two forces work together for our good. “God works everything together for the good of those who love him,” as we’re told in Romans 8:28. That very much includes life’s trials as a kind of refining process.
A Christian counselor describes how his understanding of marriage has evolved over the years. He reflects that he entered into marriage expecting it to be a provision of God for his happiness. And while it has been in many ways, he’s eventually come to realize that it’s also--and more importantly--an instrument of God for his holiness. Marriage is a school of the Lord to teach the lessons of what it really means to love: to honor, to serve, to forgive, and to lay down your life for another person, in a daily life of faithful, sacrificial devotion. That process doesn’t happen naturally, of course, and our selfish human nature resists it. But those hard lessons serve a vital redemptive purpose in helping us to become more Christ-like.
A mother and her 18-year-old daughter were talking one day around the kitchen table, and the mother asked whether her daughter had given any thought to the kind of man she might like to marry. After a moment’s thought, her daughter answered, “I’d really like to find someone like Dad, so thoughtful and sensitive and caring.” “Oh, honey,” her mother answered, “they don’t come that way.” And she was right: it takes time and some hard life lessons for all of us, both husbands and wives, to learn the transforming ways of love.
Someone has written, “If we have never loved deeply or suffered deeply, we are unable to understand spiritual things at any depth…. Even God has to use love and suffering to teach you all the lessons that really matter. They are his primary tools for human transformation.” (Richard Rohr). That’s a profound truth. The relationship between love and suffering is one of the deep mysteries of our faith, and one of its great truths. Suffering comes as a blessing in disguise.
As the writer of Hebrews puts it, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (12:11). Elsewhere the New Testament speaks of the rewards of suffering as developing greater character and hope and spiritual maturity (Romans 5:3-4; James 1:2-4). Pain causes us to sink our roots more deeply into the soil of faith and dependence on God’s grace.
Israel was miraculously delivered from slavery in Egypt and led by God into the safety of the wilderness, but God also tested them repeatedly there, using suffering to teach them to trust him, even when they didn’t see the bigger picture. The wilderness journey was a vital part of God’s blessing, if only they had understood that and learned its lessons. The same is true for us, in our own wilderness experiences. God is always at work for our good in the trials of life.
In his novel “Chesapeake,” James Michener makes the following observation about this:
“A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend to its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required…. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained and juices can flow; for ships, like men [and women], respond to challenge.”
Not all stress is bad, and in fact we need life’s challenges and goals to stay engaged at a healthy level. Anyone who retires with the idea of just sitting on the porch for the rest of their days probably won’t have to wait very long. In fact, in one study, those passive retirees lived on average only another six months. We have to keep a growing edge in our lives or we’ll die, literally and spiritually. Life is meant to be a journey, not a destination.
Jesus was richly blessed, of course, but like us he was also tested: first, by Satan in the wilderness, and then by the relentless opposition of the Jewish establishment, and finally, of course, in the garden of Gethsemane. As Hebrews tells us, “We don’t have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (4:15-16). Even Jesus was tested and his experience of humanity deepened by his suffering, so he’s able to understand and help us in our own painful times.
So, we can thank God even for those blessings that come to us in the disguise of trials and suffering. God’s love and faithfulness never fail, come what may. As the poet William Cowper has written, “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform…. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break with blessings on your head.”
Amen.
