Then the Spirit led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted….

At the end of my Army Officer Basic Training, there was a comprehensive final called “Operation Cutthroat.” The final was not a written test but rather a 17-day test of platoon and company sized missions. Seventeen straight days of living in the woods, installing minefields, clearing minefields, blowing up bridges, building floating bridges, and every other skill they had trained us to do over the previous 4 months. We would perform these missions while being attacked by various kinds of opposition forces (OpFors): ambushes, snipers, airstrikes. And most of these missions would be on minimal sleep and food.

After all of the training we had gone through, most of us were not dreading it at all. We’d spent months training for this. The guys (and gals) in my class were very good. We had a great platoon.

It was all going great until 3 minutes after our first formation at 4:00am on Day 1.

It started raining.

Not a late afternoon sprinkle.
Not a 30-minute thunderstorm.
A sheet of continuous water so thick you couldn’t see 6 feet in front of you.
Rain that hit the ground and bounced up.
Rain that soaked through solid steel.
Rain that lasted 7 days.
It was never NOT raining.

Then it stopped. For 27 hours.

Then it rained again for 8 days.

It was beyond any kind of misery I had ever endured. No sleep. Little food. Cold. Wet. Stressed. Angry. Frustrated. We complained. We yelled. We were short-tempered. We were beyond miserable.

But nobody left. Nobody quit.

We volunteered for this. As bad as this was, we all knew that war was worse. Within weeks, each of us would be entrusted with the lives of hundreds of soldiers. It was for the best of us, and for them, to go through this wilderness experience. To avoid the wilderness is to avoid the core reason why we were there in the first place.

________________

Humanity did not need another conquering hero. Humanity did not need a physician to heal every physical ailment. Humanity did not need another religious leader to establish a new religion. Humanity did not need a genie to provide unlimited resources.

Humanity needed a heart transplant. Humanity needed a new heart that was not jaded with self-preservation, nor corrupted by selfish desires, or broken by selfishness. In short, humanity needed a heart that wasn’t consumed by sin.

And there was only one way for that transplant to happen. A Savior with a perfect and pure heart would have to give His away. Not for selfish glory but for self-less, unconditional love. That meant going to the wilderness… and along the way, this selflessness would defeat death.

That may sound like a tragedy, but it’s gospel. It’s GOOD NEWS. The essential thing we need was the essential reason Jesus became flesh. He went to the wilderness. Not just one time in the story… but over and over and over again. Culminating at a cross on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Come take the journey with us through the Gospel of Mark and watch the story unfold. Absorb it. Let it change you. Walk with the Savior who walks into our hurt, our chaos, our despair, our sin, our brokenness to redeem. To make new.

This is the BEST NEWS you’ll ever experience.

Grant