Strong Enough for This Demanding Life
Jesus was baptized, demonstrating him to be the beloved of God with the authority of God. We can only understand Jesus rightly by seeing him at this place of beginning, by seeing him in relation to God, not only as God’s child, but as his beloved child.
Like him, we also are baptized. At the moment of baptism, we give witness that the God who called Jesus his beloved child calls you and me to be his beloved children, too. Apart from the witness of baptism, we aren’t fully comprehensible as human beings, for it is baptism, not biology, that tells us who we really are.
Read more of Mark chapter 1.
After Jesus was baptized, he was tested. The test showed him capable of living the unique and demanding life of the Christ.
Like him, we also are tested. The moment we become a Christian, we enter a new dimension of existence. Is our character strong enough for this demanding of a life? Testing, not talk, shows what’s inside us.
After he was tested, Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom of God. He told people that the world was not the way they thought it was—a place where they were merely making a living or making war or making money. Instead, it was the place where God was making salvation, where every person was a creature loved by God and chosen by him for the grandest of purposes.
After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.”
Mark 1:14-15, The Message
Like Jesus, we also preach the good news of the kingdom of God. We tell people by our words and our actions that the invisible God is working out his purposes in our lives. Everybody wishes for this good news, everyone longs for it, even has moments of believing it. But our task as Christians is to be deliberate about living out this conviction so that our words and actions give evidence of its reality.
Are we up to it, you and I?
Only by the power of the Spirit . . . the same Spirit that empowered Jesus.
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