Before Jesus ever preached a sermon, He survived a desert. Right after His baptism — right after the skies opened and the Father spoke words of love over Him — the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. No crowds, no miracles, no momentum. Just forty days of hunger, isolation, and relentless pressure. It's tempting to rush past this moment on the way to the good stuff, but this isn't a detour from Jesus's ministry. It's the beginning of it. The wilderness is where we see what Jesus is actually made of — and in turn, where we start to understand what a life fully devoted to God can look like, even when that life is hard.

At some point, most of us have done the math on faith. Maybe it happened early — sitting in a church pew as a kid, listening to a list of things you were supposed to stop doing. Maybe it happened later, after a season of life that left you quietly disillusioned, wondering if the whole thing was worth the effort you'd put into it. Or maybe it's happening right now, somewhere in the back of your mind, as you weigh what it would actually cost you to go all in — to be the kind of person who brings their whole self, not just their Sunday morning self, to God and to the people around them.

Just days after the Holy Spirit arrived at Pentecost and the early church was born, two of Jesus's closest followers — Peter and John — were making their way to the temple in Jerusalem for the afternoon hour of prayer. It was a routine moment. An ordinary Thursday, more or less. But what happened next was anything but ordinary.

Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, Jerusalem was packed. People had traveled from all over the known world to celebrate Pentecost, a major Jewish festival, and the city was alive with the noise and energy of thousands of people from dozens of different nations, cultures, and languages all crowded into the same space. It would have felt a little like an ancient version of an international airport — familiar chaos, everyone passing through, everyone keeping mostly to their own.

There's a moment most of us can point to — a meal that ruined every mediocre meal that came after it, a conversation that made us realize what real friendship could feel like, a sunrise that made us genuinely stop and catch our breath. Something that reached into our ordinary experience and quietly rewrote our expectations. Once you've tasted something that good, you can't un-taste it. And you find yourself willing to go to surprising lengths to experience it again.

Like many people in the modern world, I struggle to sit with discomfort. I often go to extreme lengths to avoid the unease that comes with slowing down and paying attention to what is truly happening in my heart. In silence, distressing thoughts and difficult emotions often rise to the surface—and in response, I rush to numb or distract myself. 

At the very beginning of the book of Acts, we're given an account of Jesus' final moments on earth before He ascended into heaven. After spending forty days with His disciples following His death and resurrection, Jesus left His people with these parting words:

I don't know about you, but the Holy Spirit can be a little difficult for me to comprehend. I've grown up around Christian teaching my whole life, and it still baffles me. So I can only imagine how confused the Corinthian Christians must have been — some of the earliest followers of Jesus who ever existed. Think about how hard it would have been to start following the ways of Jesus before the New Testament had been written, before online devotionals existed, and before podcasts, preachers, and books were readily available. That's why Paul often speaks to the Corinthians like children, patiently explaining the most basic principles of faith over and over again.

We live in a world that has more access to information than any generation in human history. At any moment, we can search for answers, stream expert opinions, access entire libraries from a device in our pocket. And yet, for all of that access, most of us are not experiencing a corresponding increase in wisdom, clarity, or the deep sense of knowing how to actually live well. We have more data than ever and are no less confused about what to do with our lives, our relationships, our futures, and our faith. Information, it turns out, is not the same thing as truth. And knowing facts is not the same thing as being guided.

There are moments when prayer feels impossible. There are seasons in life when grief, anger, confusion, and despair overwhelm us, and we cannot find the words to speak. In these desperate moments, talking with God can feel like the last thing we want to do. Even when we long to cry out to our Father, summoning the energy and emotional bandwidth to pray can feel beyond our ability.

We live in a world that is remarkably short on guarantees. Relationships that seemed unshakeable come apart. Plans that were carefully laid get dismantled by circumstances nobody saw coming. Institutions we trusted turn out to be more fragile than we thought. And over time, if we are honest, the accumulated experience of living in an uncertain world begins to shape the way we relate to even the most important things in our lives — including God. We believe His promises in theory, but we hold them a little loosely, because we have learned, often the hard way, that the things we count on have a tendency to shift.

One of the quieter tragedies of the Christian life is living in poverty amid abundance. Not material poverty — but the kind that comes from simply not seeing what you already have. It is entirely possible to be the recipient of extraordinary grace and still move through your days feeling vaguely empty, vaguely anxious, vaguely like something essential is missing — not because it is missing, but because no one has turned on the light long enough for you to see what is already in the room.

We tend to reserve certain language for certain kinds of people. When someone talks about being led by the Spirit, we picture a particular type — a pastor with a well-worn Bible, a missionary who gave up everything, an individual who spends hours in contemplative prayer. Someone further along, more spiritually developed, more attuned to the frequency of heaven than the rest of us who are just trying to get through the week. We listen to their stories of guidance and quiet prompting with a mixture of admiration and quiet resignation, as if that kind of intimate, Spirit-led life is available to them but not quite to us.

In Galatians 5, Paul encourages the believers in Galatia to live in the freedom that Christ offers and not to look back to their old lives and become enslaved to the practices and habits they used to have. And at the end of the chapter, Paul paints a picture of what our former lives might have looked like (selfishness, division, idolatry, envy, and the list goes on), but now, we’re called to a life of freedom. 

Our mindset matters. Our thoughts create the attitudes and actions that define our days. In a very real way, our thoughts construct the world in which we live.

When you and I walk by the Spirit, we walk in victory. And just like the lady in the parking lot, we can sweetly celebrate every time we recognize what our selfish nature might want — and choose instead to be governed by love and walk humbly in the power of God's Spirit.

When the day of Pentecost arrived, the disciples were together in one place — waiting, as Jesus had told them to. They had seen the resurrection. They had watched Him ascend. They had been told that something was coming, though none of them could have fully imagined what that something would look like when it arrived. And then, without warning, the room changed.

On the night before everything fell apart, Jesus gathered His closest friends around a table and began to prepare them for what was coming. He knew what the next few days held — the betrayal, the arrest, the cross. And He knew what it would do to the people sitting across from Him. They had left everything to follow Him. Their entire understanding of the future was built around His presence. And He was about to leave.

When we picture Christians who possess the Holy Spirit, a particular image often comes to mind. We tend to assume that "Spirit-filled" believers are those who are especially charismatic, dynamic, or prophetic—those whose faith shows up in bold, visible ways. Too easily, we equate the presence of the Spirit with ministry that is striking or dramatic.

Most of us know the difference between surviving and being truly alive — even if we struggle to put it into words. Surviving looks like going through the motions — getting through the day, maintaining the routine, keeping up appearances — while something essential on the inside quietly empties out. It is possible to be breathing and functioning and still feel like something in you has gone dry. Like the vitality that used to be there has slowly, almost imperceptibly, drained away.