As I neared the top of the ski lift last week at Breckenridge, I watched something both beautiful and haunting further up the mountain, near the peak, around twelve or thirteen thousand feet.  The wind was blowing from the other side of the mountain from some place I couldn’t see.  What I could see were the masses of snow it would pick up and then send in beautiful white plumes hundreds of feet into the air.  Sometimes they would spin themselves out in what Cameron called snow tornados.  Other times, they just seemed to vaporize in a smoky haze in the frigid air just like they’ve been doing for millions of years while that mountain just stood there totally indifferent to the whole process.  James’ words came to mind, “Your life . . . (is) a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:14).” 

We know what he means, don’t we?  Life gets by us in a hurry.  While we’re here, we think we’re the center of the universe.  The truth is, people have been coming and then misting away for millions of years before we got here and the world has gone on without them.  If I died today, you’d have my funeral by Wednesday and someone would take my place by next Sunday.  Life goes on after we just blow through for a while.  But, watching those snow tornados play themselves out on the top of the mountain I found myself thinking about how badly I want my life to be more than just a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  I want it to count for something that will outlive my presence here.  And, the only way I know to make certain that will happen is to be vitally, personally and intimately connected to the God who made both that mountain and the wind that blows from behind it so that my life will be enmeshed in his eternal purpose. 

Jesus knew that he had a mountain to climb.  A hill on which he would die on a cross after suffering the worst of all torture, paying for someone else’s sin.  He had to do that in order to be connected to something more eternal than just his brief physical presence here.  He had to know that by the time he was baptized.  And, that almost certainly had something to do with what happened next.  “Then,” after his baptism, Matthew writes, “Then, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

In a way, this text has always puzzled me.  Jesus has just been baptized and heard his father’s blessing, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17).”  It’s kind of like an inauguration, a grand send-off.  But, the very next place his father sends Jesus off to is a forty-day stint in the wilderness with no one but Satan for company.  You’d think it was time to get to work.  No telling how many people have already been born and just misted away since Adam and Even took the first bite out of the wrong apple.  Surely God knows and Jesus does, too, that the world is going to hell.  What good can Jesus possibly do by spending forty days all alone in the wilderness?

Later on, Jesus does something very similar toward the end of his life.  Just before he takes that lonely trip up Calvary to die for the sins of the whole world, he climbs the Mount of Olives.  It’s recorded in scripture that his disciples tried to follow him but Jesus only let them go so far before stopping them so that he could be all alone with God (Luke 22:39-44).  Yet again, there are people who need to be reached, loved and witnessed to.  Who better to do that than Jesus?  What in the world is he doing spending all this time alone when there is so very much to be done for the sake of what is eternal?

Like bookends holding everything else in the middle, on the front and back of all that Jesus ever did, we have these two moments where he spent time alone wrestling, struggling, being tested and praying.  That ought to tell us something about what it means to not be so pressured by the demands of the immediate that we fail to stay connected to God’s eternal purpose and thereby find our lives wasting away like so much mist in the wind.

These temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness, temptations to use his power to meet his own needs, to prove himself to people and to do something, anything, are interesting because the scripture says that the spirit specifically put him in the wilderness so he’d have to face them.  The book of James assures us that, when we’re lured away from God toward what is evil that we can’t blame God for it.  That evil would have no luring affect on us if there weren’t something in us that wanted to sin in the first place (James 1:13).  That chocolate pie in the refrigerator would have no affect on you unless there was something in you that didn’t want to be on a diet in the first place.  That good looking woman at the office would be just another woman, not a temptation to ruin your reputation and marriage, if there wasn’t something in you that you found running the risk of being ruined a thrilling possibility.  James was telling us that we can’t blame God for our out of control appetites.  But, Jesus’ wilderness experience also teaches us that God allows, even causes us, to be put in situations where we’ll have to learn something about just how dependent we are on him. 

In one case Jesus didn’t choose that for himself.  The Spirit led him into it.  In that moment of trial, Jesus responded to the tempter with these words of dependence on God, “‘One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” and “‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”  In the other case, Jesus chose the moment for himself.  Just before going to the cross, when he was tempted to give in to his own very human desire to live and not die, he finally surrendered himself to total dependence on God.  “‘Father,’” he prayed, “‘if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done (Luke 22:42).”  Either way, where would we be if Jesus hadn’t known how much he needed his Father? 

These past few weeks have been very interesting to me.  My emotions have run the gamut since that weekend, five short weeks ago, when we defined our church’s values and reclaimed our mission as an outpost of the gospel in this community.  On the one hand, it’s thrilling to be a part of a church that is recommitting itself to the primary mission of sharing Christ and leading people to be his disciples.  On the other hand, these have also been anxious days. 

For one thing, there is so very much to do.  So very many needs.  Close your eyes and put your finger on any place in this church’s life or in this community and you will find overwhelming and unmet need.  There is so much to do.  For another, there are so many expectations about how to go about meeting those needs.  One of the most stressful challenges I have experienced in these weeks is that of keeping the expectations of hundreds of people in perspective while at the same time struggling to keep our energies and dreams focused.  It finally occurred to me that God has given me yet another opportunity to learn just how much I need to trust him for what I cannot do. 

Those moments come in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes they’re chosen for us.  Twelve years ago when my marriage died, I thought I would, too.  I found myself, a grown man, reduced to a whimpering pile of emotional rubble.  I also had to get up on Sunday and preach to a group of people who, for the most part, had no idea what it was like at home.  One day, when it all finally caved in on me, I was sitting in my study weeping.  I knew I needed to pray but I couldn’t find the words.  So, I just began to say the name of Jesus.  Over and over again, out loud, I cried, “Jesus!  Jesus!  Jesus!”  I didn’t know what to ask him or what to tell him.  Somewhere in all of that, I lost the energy to even say his name anymore.  But, when I grew quiet from exhaustion, something happened.  For a very brief moment, in that little room, I felt the literal presence of Christ with me.  I don’t miss what I was going through at the time.  But, what I do sometimes miss is the intensity of knowing every single moment how absolutely dependent I am on God for the next breath I take. 

Sometimes, those moments are chosen for us, just like they were for Jesus.  Sometimes, we have to choose them for ourselves, like Jesus did when, just before the cross, he chose to be alone with God and recommit himself to whatever it was God wanted to do with him.  Either way, where would be without those moments when we come face to face with our absolute dependence on God?

It may not seem like we’re doing very much this next month by committing ourselves to prayer.  But, when we look at how Jesus spent his time, just after his baptism and just before his crucifixion, just before he took that lonely trip up the mountain, is there anything we could be doing that could more important than praying?  Of choosing moments for ourselves when we discipline ourselves to remember just how dependent we are on God?  We’ve never lacked for ideas around here.  We’ve never lacked for immediate and pressing need at every turn.  How is it that over these past four decades so much time and energy and money have been spent with increasingly less to show for it? 

Keith Parks struck a raw nerve last week when he made a not so subtle remark about how little we pray for missionaries.  How little we pray, period.  How little we pray because we are so skeptical that it accomplishes anything.  How we tap computer keys with absolute confidence that our messages are instantly received all over the world but that we have little confidence that talking with God means anything near as significant.  We can’t always see the results.  At least when we work, we can see something happen that’s measurable and, therefore, to us, more meaningful.  We’ve become so dependent on our own ability to make measurable things happen that we’ve forgotten how much we need God. 

That’s all Satan wanted Jesus to do in the wilderness.  Just forget how much he needed God and do something measurably significant with what he had on hand.  This is what Jesus’ time in the wilderness and in prayer before his crucifixion should teach us.  That, at the beginning and at the end of all we do, if we are not living in total dependence on God then what we do in the meantime will be of no more substance than mist in the wind.  Prayer, whether we’re called to it by crisis or choose it out of disciplined commitment, prayer is not a time when we put a spiritual coin in a heavenly vending machine to get out of God what we think we need.  Prayer is when we finally accept how empty our lives are and our church is unless God gives them meaning.  Even if, as it did with Jesus, prayer means expressing such a dependence on God that even if it leads to our own death he can make something meaningful out of it.  Something eternally purposeful.  Something more than just a mist blowing in the wind.

Years ago I met a man who had been a missionary in a foreign country.  He was the first Christian missionary to set foot in that country, ever.  There was no one there to greet him when he arrived.  No arrangements had been made for his coming.  He was just given an assignment and a plane ticket.  And, he went.  I asked him, “What’s the first thing you do when you go to a place like that?”  I’ve hardly been anywhere where there wasn’t something familiar.  Where people spoke my language and gas stations and ATM’s abounded on every corner.  Where, even if I was away from home, I could make where I was feel like home pretty quickly.  “What do you do when you first set foot off the plane?” I asked him.  The grocery store?  Rent an apartment?  Get your utilities hooked up?  I’d need something to do to keep from going crazy and make it feel like home.  I’ve forgotten his name.  I’ve even forgotten the country he was assigned to; I’ve never forgotten his answer.  What do you do just before you climb that lonely mountain of surrender and service, I wanted to know.  He said, the first thing you do, the first thing you do is pray. 

He knew what Jesus knew.  When you’re about to climb a mountain no one else has ever climbed and do something no one else has ever done before and you want it to count for eternity, the first and last thing you better do is remember how much you need God.