Full of the Holy Spirit

What do you understand about being tested? How do you feel about meeting a good challenge? Are they both part of an accomplished life? What about our spiritual life, does it need to be tested and challenged to be well-rounded and fulfilled? I believe that many of us think the time of Lent is all about being tested so that we may become the best followers of Christ that we can be.

Even so, is that the truth? What about being tested makes our spiritual life better or complete? Have you examined what being tested brings about in your life? We all must deal with both sides of testing in our lives. Both victory and defeat reveal our truest selves to all who see us as we go through each category of testing in our life's journey.

We may want to believe that all that we are and that which makes us, is not easily seen by others. Yet, just wait until you have a great success in your life or until you have the unfortunate experience of facing a severe defeat; when facing either occasion, you will find out who you really are, if you did not already know for certain.

Most of us treat success one way and failure a completely different way; falsely thinking that our greatest successes make us more valuable and more important. However, when it comes to suffering a major failure or a defeat, we wonder if we are worthy and actually make a positive difference to our families, friends, or our community. We may have been taught that we are valued no matter how our endeavors turn out, but we do not believe it because we have also been taught that "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing!"

The poet Rudyard Kipling had interesting thoughts regarding the proper way to think about life in general in a poem he named "If." One section of the poem goes like this:

"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same"

Our perception of triumphs or disasters are both imposters, masquerading as the other. Mainly because how we evaluate our spiritual life can be seen equally as either a great accomplishment or on the edge of a complete collapse based on how we understand God's definition of triumph or disaster. When we understand what God terms as triumph or disaster we can allow both to play themselves out according to the divine perspective at the time they each occur and let that interpretation overcome our own bent toward self-righteousness or self-condemnation.

In Luke 4:1-13, there is an account of Jesus being moved into a time of fulfillment and the beginning of that process has certain elements that I hope you can discover when you read it. Is one of those elements being put to a test or is it something more transformative?