Genesis 4:6–7 NIV
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Jesus overcame because He did not let a lesser desire override His greater desire for the .
“It is not an external enemy that we dread. Our foe is shut up within ourselves. An internal warfare is daily waged by us.” — John Cassian, Institutes
The Wilderness—
1. what we hunger for.
1 John 1:8 NIV
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Deuteronomy 8:2 NIV
Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.
“Fasting reveals the things that control us.” — Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
2. Trains us to to the Father.
to .
James 4:7 NIV
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you.
The goal of Lent is not stronger . It is fewer .
3. Reshapes our and our .
“Spiritual transformation only happens as each essential dimension of the human being is transformed to Christlikeness.” –Dallas Willard
Don’t just a vice. Cultivate the opposing .
1 Peter 1:16 NIV
For it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.
Micah 6:8 NIV
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
So why not behold God, look to Him, turn all your ache and desire toward his goodness and let Him have it? “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” and see if He doesn’t offer you Himself in place of whatever you thought you needed. Give Him your loneliness, your doubt, ambition, your want for sex and lust, your anxieties and fears. Tell Him that beneath all of that your true want is Him… Let Him replace your endless scrolling, your numbing with food and alcohol, your giving away your heart and body to others. Pray your pain. Simply sit in it together in silence, allowing Him to be with you there. Let Him be what He promises to be, living waters that satisfy the very seat of you. Consecrate your heart, give it to Him. Set your body and mind aside for this “one thing,” that in channeling up all this dis-ease within you it would welcome the presence of God and transform your very self. — From “Thirsting” by Strahan Coleman
Answer Key: Father; exposes; turn; learn, turn; willpower, rivals; loves, lives; suppress, virtue