March 2025 – Aspirational Adventures

I’m ploughing my way through The Bible Society’s Lent course Ploughing not because it isn’t great but because I’m not great at having to do things daily. But I love the way things get highlighted for me.

Yesterday was Jesus in the wilderness and what struck me, especially as a storyteller, and having read something about a new book about some Christian movement being accused of exaggerated over the top retelling of tales, is how do we know these things really happened???

Now Jesus doesn’t strike me as someone who would have boasted about his 40 days in the wilderness, or boasted about how he dissed the devil. So how did the writers of the three gospels it is featured in know?

It is a bit like the angel talking to Mary or Mary’s song to Elizabeth or many other things that happen with just the person concerned and a godly presence or in the Temptations a not-godly presence. We don’t know. Or we know because they probably told someone else.

I’m hoping that maybe when Jesus was walking all those many miles with his disciples, all those miles we are never told what goes on, and all those nights they spent sleeping under the stars, that it came out in bits and pieces, which the storytellers then put into something coherent.

I think in my God journey I am reaching that point where I agree with this quote

The Bible is a true story but not always factual. The truth of the Bible doesn’t come from the facts of the stories, but rather from the spiritual meaning of those stories. The true ideas the Bible teaches have little to do with history, geology, or any matters of the natural world, but have everything to do with the spiritual world and the things that really matter in our lives.

Amos Glenn, MINemergent: A Daily Communique (March 27, 2012)

Does it really matter how long Jesus was in the wilderness? Or whether the conversation between him and the devil was recorded verbatim? I don’t think so. I think instead of trying to decide if this really happened like this, whether it is the Temptation story or any of the other stories is that we need to ask God what the spiritual truth is behind this.

I do like the idea of Jesus’ follower one evening over supper saying “Go on tell us what really happened after you were baptised. Where did you? What happened?” And Jesus giving what he recalls of that time.

I would love it if he said things like “I was so hungry and knew what I could do but I knew it would be better if I carried on being hungry so I could hear God clearer.” “I know how this story pans out and I know I could make it easier but I know that if I go as the Father and I have planned then it will be better for you.”

I think Jesus responded to those temptations that are so common to us all in the way that is recorded to show he put humankind first and wanted what is best of for us all.

I binged watched “Zero Day”, a latest Netflix series, over the last two days because I was home alone. It is a great US conspiracy series but the bit that struck me, that I think is the truth of all that Jesus did, was when the President says something along the lines of “we were voted in not for what we wanted but for the good of the American people” [I’m not even going to go down the ‘is this happening now?’ route]

These temptations of Jesus, I believe, may or may not have happened, but the story is told to say that often we can do things easier, we can take short cuts, we can find a way that means we don’t get hurt, but in the long run would that really help those people we are called to serve, to be with, to witness to?

I’ll finish with another quote that says so succinctly what I’m saying here, I think,

“You prayed “use me Lord” and thought God was going to put you on a platform to speak or sing. What you didn’t know was that He was going to have you navigating through a bunch of trials so you could bless people with your testimony of resilience and not just your gifts.” -Nate Evans Jr.

Jesus was willing to go through those trials for each one of us and, I think, that is what the story of the Temptations is telling us. And is what we are meant to emulate.

Produce Fruit In Keeping With Repentance

Photographed by myself in our local park December 2021

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Matthew 3:8 – NIV

or as it says in the CEV version

Do something to show you have given up your sins

This is John the Baptist in full rant by the Jordan river.

Something happened last night that made me read this verse this morning in a different light. So I’ve always seen this verse to be about doing good things, about not breaking the 10 commandments and much more. I’ve thought it meant doing good deeds, of helping the poor, of being cheerful, etc, etc. But last night I was grappling with being put in a position I’m not comfortable with.

This is the uncomfortable position – I came up with an idea about a family event with music and food at a local park. I’ve since realised that I am being expected to coordinate and organise everything and last night that sent me into a tailspin and I was awake from about 3am. I am a visionary and an encourager but I am not great at going into places and asking people to do things. Ask me to get people together so they can do an event [which is what I do with the local areas different Messy Church leaders] and I’m great. But then someone else has to sort out the how, what, when, where, etc.

I did pray and what came to my head was to ask people to pray for someone to help me and to be open about my vulnerability. I sent the request to a group of ladies I’ve only just connected with, as well as to close friends.

Then this morning I read this verse.

I am sure I am not the only person who struggles to ask people to help.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who tries to push through when I’m not comfortable doing so.

I’m sure I’m not the only who doesn’t like to say “I can do this but cannot this”.

But if I am a new creation, if the Son of The Creator God has truly set me free, if I am truly repentant of my old life, then I should be able to be vulnerable, should be able to say “I can’t do that” and should be able to ask for help.

To me this is “producing fruit in keeping with repentance” or showing that I have given up my “sin” of self-reliance.

A friend mention about being a leaf and not tree [I’ve got a poem coming together around this] and I think this is part of repenting of being self-reliant, of producing the fruit of connectivity and community. It is repenting of “going it alone” and producing fruit of “needing others even if they hurt at times.”

After reading this verse this morning after my sleepless but revelatory night I am now going to have a ponder what other areas in my life I “miss God’s mark” and where I need to “turn around” and see what fruit is really there.

There’s more to producing the fruit of repentance than just going good things.