“4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” 5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ” 7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ”” (Matt 4:1-10 ESV)

Licensed to labor, our labors hold up under the doubts and insinuations: it is, after all, the Commanding Officer we work for. That is a non-negotiable, though miserable Man will suggest it is not true. Miserable Man has not had the experience of the Divine Love from on High; instead, thinking all men some strange evolutionary breach or beachhead, they cannot hold up the Faith occasion.

A Faith Occasion because we are stronger for those things we Own and take on Faith, than those things that coddle or spoil us. More, we are created in His Image, co-conspirators and teammates even with the Most High in the following sense: that He sees around corners of our own self-doubts and compromises, to invest in each of us His children the prowess, the professionalism, the Capacity to Serve and be a Blessing to many.

And why, then, the atheist asks, has He gone silent, no prayers answered it can seem? Because we are after all Image Bearers and expected to shoulder the very same burdens He is shouldering in His instantiation as the Suffering Son. The Suffering Beloved One. The Suffering Daughter. The Suffering One nonetheless framed as Man, not as a divinity but as Man. Because He is working with tools already top-notch: Man’s created fact, created status, created rebuke, a rebuke to doubt and sin.

And to Man’s dreams, then, in these we are no longer bound to our crippling compromised self-image, but we Soar. We speak the promises so long forbidden or avoided by sinister happenchance. We are in His Image and as such, when we do wake up from all that, we are tasked with Faith: our lives given gladly in exchange for that holy News that Christ the Commander in Chief is the one for whom we toil and labor. We can get up a rather virulent Fight, Pluck, and Composure knowing this. We are not going to be discouraged, either, nor dissuaded: first, the gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable; second, we have observed Christ and He walked in these same shoes. Our service, then, complains not of inefficiencies or lack of Love from the Father. Our service doesn’t do these things because we are mandated and convinced He is smarter than the cynic, and more in league than the skeptic. In league with us and with our poor man’s Incarnation, Placement, Embeddedness: there is no class distinction. He is rich man and poor man. He is Us. He is capable and instructive, to Inspire such that we resent no longer the modest digs we find ourselves in: go strong, Pilgrim! Go for broke, Servant! Be inspired, Fledgling! And thus it is a holy Fact of God involving us at a level, a trust setting, greater than anything we imagine for ourselves. He envisioned the Grown Man or Woman from the outset, and ceased not to believe in us.