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Years ago, when I was living in Montana, I was having a particularly good Lent. Everything I wanted to do was going well. My prayer life was the best it has ever been, and I just felt God's presence with me all the time.
And then my bad day intersected with another person's bad day. My computer had just broken down, so my phone was my only lifeline to do a great deal of the work I had to do. It was a Wednesday morning, which was when we had our Wednesday Eucharist at St. Peter's. It just so happened that one of the parishioners there that morning was experiencing the one year anniversary of her husband's death, and she had given up coffee for Lent. The combination made a little out of sorts, so when she came back in the vesting area to talk to us, she ended up taking my phone, which just so happened to have a similar case to hers.
Well, after the coffee hour, when I had to get back to my other work, I noticed my phone was gone. I looked everywhere for that phone, and couldn't find it. I look over every part of the church and office that I had been that day, looking for a sign. At one point, I bent down on the floor to see if my phone had fallen, which is when, of course, my pants split right down the middle.
After going home to change, I suddenly realized what had probably happened. I was able to get ahold of this woman to get my phone back, and I'm pretty sure she gave up on giving up coffee after that.
The whole time I kept my mentor, Heidi, appraised of what was going on. At one point she told me "I think you're going through some serious spiritual warfare right now."
It is interesting how spiritual warfare seems to occur at those important points in our spiritual lives. Besides this moment, my major bouts with spiritual warfare have come at key points in time in my discerning my call to ministry. Sometimes it was doubt in my faith, at other times it was doubt in myself.
Jesus too experienced spiritual warfare. We hear about it today in the Gospel. Jesus is in a key point in discerning the next steps in His ministry. He was also at a high point in His spiritual life as a human being. He just had the Holy Spirit descend like a dove upon Him after being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan, an event we celebrated not long ago. At this point He goes out to the desert for 40 days, reflecting the Israelites journey for 40 years in the desert, which we hear about briefly in Deuteronomy this morning. That time of 40 days is reflected in our own observance of Lent, as we talked about on Ash Wednesday. It is at this point when Jesus is in the desert that the devil chooses to enter the story to try and tempt Him.
And Jesus endures. But for us, it doesn't always seem so easy. We, after all, are not God incarnate in human form.
It's in these times that we should remember Paul's words in Romans today. He begins by quoting Leviticus 18:5: "the word is near you, on your lips and in your heart."
"The word is near you." That is God's promise to us to be there no matter what. Its God's promise that no matter the hardship, God will be there, even if we can't always tell.
We know this from the Psalm. God is our refuge and our stronghold. God is the one in whom we put our trust. The devil uses this very Psalm, the portion about the angels protecting our feet from the stone, to try to tempt Jesus because it is true. God is there, present with us no matter the hardship or the heartache.
We know most of all that God is there with us because of Jesus. Jesus too was tempted as we are. Jesus too suffered. Jesus even died as we all will. Because of this, we know God is with us always in our hard times because He knows what it is like. God knows our human experience intimately and because of that He is able to come in and be a part of those experiences with us.
As we journey with Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days, and as we also discern the next steps in our lives of faith, we too may be tempted. We too may experience spiritual warfare. Those times are never easy. They can shake us to our core. But God is there with us, no matter what. He will be present with us in our struggle. No matter who you are or what you go through, the Word will be very near you. All we have to do is listen to it.