How do you know God is in it with you? It’s a big question when we have resistance in our life, along with some pain or uncertainty. 

In Western culture, we often equate things going well with God must be in it. But, I want to take you to a chapter in the Bible that rocked me as I read it. In Matthew 4, the first verse here in this story is of Jesus being tempted. It says that the Spirit led him to be tempted and took him into the wilderness. God knew where he was taking Jesus.

And if you jump back a little before that moment, Jesus received this enormous badge of honor from His Father. The Father said I am so pleased with You. You’re the Son that I hoped for, You are the One, and those around Him could see this is a big moment.

God had badged Jesus as the One chosen, and now He’s going forward on His mission. And yet here at the beginning, Jesus had to prove it. Jesus had to prove who He was, but not in front of humanity. Instead, it was in the spiritual realm.

The entire spiritual realm watched Jesus and saw how He would put up with the tempter. This was a titanic battle. The enemy came at Him in three different ways to work on His flesh, to offer Jesus a shortcut, and finally, to try to negotiate with the Son of God.

And, of course, Jesus passed with flying colors, but He had to prove it with all of eternity in the balance. Jesus proved it by dealing with the pain, the difficulty of resisting the flesh, and avoiding an opportunity to take an unnatural shortcut to get to where He should be anyway. He is God, so why not take the path of least resistance? Except, it would have ruined the entire mission.

When Jesus talked about not turning stones into bread, He harkened back to Deuteronomy 8 to remind the enemy that man doesn’t live on food. Instead, we hold fast to the Word of God, and that is the sustenance for us.

Jesus modeled that the most important thing above my pain, above the things that I don’t have, is to find my deep contentment in the promises of God.

The hack in your LifeMission is to persist through and pursue God. And that other word… pain. It’s part of the equation.

This shook me because sometimes you’re going to have to prove it, and you’re going to have to repeatedly prove it as your leadership is stretched. 

Are you in a prove-it moment?

Are you proving it in private, where only the spiritual realm sees what you face?

Or, is it a prove-it moment in front of those looking to your leadership, like your family, your Calling, or your career?

Here’s where the actual acceleration in you’re Calling happens. Pursue and persist through the pain. Keeping in mind that the pain is not something to run from.

I often tell Heather, my wife, the best things that we have, have involved a great deal of pain. The best things in life always include resistance.

And so, resist the mindset that difficulty means God’s not in it. Don’t believe that for a moment.

We know that here in this broken world, resistance will come, but we will stay with our integrity to pursue and persist because God is worth everything (including the lack of a meal, not having everything we want, and the long game of waiting in faithfulness!)

Keep pursuing and persisting even through the pain! Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up!

In your corner,

Jeff Gerhardt

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