After His anointing by baptism in the Jordan River, do you think Jesus anticipated that He would be immediately led by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days of fasting? If you close your eyes for a moment, I wonder if you can imagine yourself with Jesus there, with a rock for a pillow and absolutely no one else around. Do you feel ready to accompany Him for what comes next?

At what seemed an opportune time, the devil arrived on the scene, in his sly and slippery way, not unlike the way he approached Eve in the Garden so many years before.

Whereas the deceiver’s words to Eve began, “Did God really say…?” his opening lines to Jesus were, “If you are the Son of God…”

The same bottom-line questions of doubt echoed through his challenges: how solid was their relationship with God and their trust in Him, and how firm was their identity as His children?

Eve, and subsequently Adam, followed the path to disbelief that their very own Creator and Companion God had their best in mind.

Maybe He is holding out on us…maybe the fruit God told us not to eat is exactly what’s been lacking in our lives all along…now that you mention it, this fruit does look tastier than the fruit on any other tree…ok then, why not…let’s eat this too-good-to-resist fruit and become like God in our knowledge of good and evil…we don’t want to miss out on the More that might be out there for us, do we?

In stark contrast, Jesus resisted this same Fear of Missing Out. Simultaneously fully man and fully God, He was fully prepared to become the fulfillment of the prophecy God spoke following Adam and Eve’s disobedience. He was the very One who would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15).

Could you feel it there beside Him, during every one of those 40 days of fasting in the wilderness? Jesus was strengthened in His Spirit by His Father’s words spoken over Him during His baptism, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Questioning or proving His identity would never take Jesus off the path laid out for Him. He both fully trusted and was fully trustworthy to live out the calling He had been given. When the time had come, after His pain-filled prayer if-there-was-any-other-way-this-cup-would-be-taken-from-Him, He submitted to God’s will and “for the joy set before Him He endured the cross.” (Hebrews 12:2)

The easier way would have been to turn stone into bread, to prematurely perform a crowd-stunning miracle or to worship the prince of darkness and receive his promised kingdoms, but those were not the ways of the Kingdom of God. Jesus knew whatever He was “missing out on” was not what God had planned for Him. So He resolutely countered Satan’s temptations, “No, no, no. Goodbye.”

I wonder how we might do the same?