THE MAIN IDEA
Satan may work hard to make us stumble, but God leads us to His will. 

GOD WILL REFINE YOUR FAITHFULNESS
Jesus had just been baptized by John. For  His humility and obedience, the Son of God is led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be  tempted by the enemy of God. What are we to learn from that? First, we need to understand that  God never tempts us (James 1:13). Second, although God never tempts us, God will test us. Not that God will give us a trial to test whether we will pass or fail. God will allow trials to come our  way, and God may even send trials our way, in order to refine our faithfulness and grow us into  mature Christians. God desires our faithfulness—that is, being full of faith, so that we act in  obedience to the will of God as revealed in His word. Whenever we act in faith and obedience  and demonstrate spiritual growth in our lives, without fail, we will experience trials that test our  faithfulness. God wants to mold us into the image of Jesus Christ. If our goal is to avoid the trial,  we won’t grow into the image of Christ. 

GOD WILL REFRAME YOUR FAITHFULNESS
Because of pride and sin, our tendency  will always be to respond to those trials on our own terms. We should use whatever resources  God has given to us to deal the challenges that we face. But God has ordained that we should use  two specific tools and resources to deal with the challenges of our lives—namely, prayer and His  word. The whole point of God bringing those trials into our lives is so that we would learn to  prioritize prayer and His word over anything else that we might bring to the table. In the Bible,  we always find the people of God fasting in conjunction with prayer during times of crisis. Jesus  was not simply fasting. He was desperately praying to God to help Him fight off the temptations  of the devil. Jesus was not praying for the Father to remove Him from the trial. Jesus was  praying so that He might be equipped to withstand the temptations of the devil. More than  anything, prayer is about listening for God’s voice. We can tell that we are listening to God’s  voice if we are pursuing the purposes of God as revealed in His word, even though you know  that it will require some sacrifice. God’s purpose for His Son was to go to the cross. 

GOD WILL REWARD YOUR FAITHFULNESS
The angels came and attended to Jesus,  just as Psalm 91 promised. And no doubt, the angels fed Him, giving Him strength. Even if our  faithfulness wavers, God’s faithfulness never wavers “toward those who keep the demands of  His covenant” (Psalm 25:10). The demands of His covenant is to believe in Jesus Christ, and  Him crucified, resurrected, and returning—crucified for the forgiveness of our sins, resurrected  to eternal life for the hope of eternal life, and returning to give us a purpose for our lives to seek  and to save the lost and to build up His church! Faith in Christ does require a leap of faith. But  whatever a person believes takes a leap of faith—even atheism. But atheist philosophers agree:  Atheism offers no meaning and hope. For Christians who believe the word of God, we ought to  live for the purposes of God and for the glory of God. Because the word of God tells us very  clearly that Jesus is coming back soon enough. Until He does, the word of God also tells us that  we have all been called to seek and to save the lost and to build up His church. But there is one  who will do everything in his power to stop us. But the word of God also tells us that every time  the devil comes to tempt us, we should submit yourselves to God—to His word and His purpose  for us—and resist the devil, and he will flee from us. 

DISCUSSION QUESTION
What is something really difficult that you have accomplished, and how have  you grown from it? If you are a believer, how did it make you more like Christ, if it did?