​Reflection:

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Right after this blessed moment of baptism God confirms Jesus' identity and announces His pleasure. Shortly after this strong affirmation from God, we find Jesus, in Matthew 4:1-10,

being tempted by the enemy after enduring a forty-day fast. The enemy immediately challenges what God has spoken by saying

‘if You are the Son of God’.

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Friend, often the enemy’s first temptation is to get us to question our identity in Christ. When we receive God’s gracious, unearned gift of salvation our identity is sealed in the blood of Christ, which defeats the enemy.

Could you imagine an elementary school student coming home with an ‘F’ on their report card and the parent saying you are no longer my child, change your name and leave my house! Of course not! Neither does the Lord dismiss you or me when we fail because His love never fails

(1 Corinthians 13:8).

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If you were gardening and you saw a plant that was drooping and bent downward would you uproot the plant, trash it, and start over? Hopefully not. What a skilled gardener often will do is put a wooden stake in the ground next to it and tie the plant to it, leaving the plant dependent on the wood to grow

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This is our life in Christ, leaning not on our own works, but on the grace that God purchased through Jesus Christ on that cross to help us to grow in Him.

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Life Lesson: The enemy wants you to doubt who you are, whose you are, and to spend time trying to earn what you have already been given.

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Prayer:

Lord, thank You for dying for me so I could be identitfied in You as Your beloved. Please help me to continue to remember the grace You have shown to me at the cross that I might live for You, in good times and bad, all the days of my life. I pray to You, in Jesus' name. Amen.