Matthew 4:2 is one of the funniest verses in the Bible to me. It says, “After fasting forty days and forty nights… Jesus was hungry.” I love that :-)

I love it because it is hilariously understated. But I also love it, because it reveals to us that Jesus had needs. Isn’t that interesting? Even God’s Son on earth got hungry. The Son of God got tired. He got frustrated with people. He felt lonely at times.

Isn’t that refreshing to hear? Isn’t that good news? While Jesus was the Son of Almighty God, He was also a human being – just like you and me. And that means He understands our human weaknesses and our human limitations – because He Himself experienced them, too, when He was on earth, living among us, living as one of us.

Jesus, as the eternal Son of God, did not have to endure our human limitations. He didn’t have to feel weak, or vulnerable, or needy in any way. But John 1:14 and Philippians 2:7 tell us that He chose to leave His rightful place in heaven and to temporarily set aside His power and omnipotence as God’s Son in order to live the limited and finite life of a human being like us. It’s remarkable!

The wilderness, then, revealed Jesus’ human limitations. The wilderness exposed Jesus’ human needs. What limitations have the “desert seasons” in your life revealed to you? What needs have your “wilderness experiences” exposed in you?

When I was deployed to Iraq with the National Guard, we lived in an actual desert. Nothing but sand and rocks and rugged wilderness for miles upon miles in every direction for nine long months.

I’m not really a nap-taker. I think I’ve taken maybe 20 naps in my entire 44 years of life so far. 12 of them were in Iraq on that deployment! I never felt as tired as I did there! I had never experienced exhaustion as deep as I did on that deployment.

Finding the edges of our human limitations is a good thing. Reaching the end of yourself – the limits of your capabilities – your wisdom, your patience, your energy – it’s a very difficult thing, but it is a very good thing.

And why is that?

Because it is at the end of our limited human capabilities that we learn to reach out for God and truly depend on His help.

Our human tendency is to ignore God until we need Him. The wilderness brings us in touch with our limits and invites us to more fully rely on God.

The human Jesus reached the ends of His human capabilities. He dealt with hunger, exhaustion, frustration, and loneliness. And in that state of vulnerability and weakness, Jesus taught us that reaching the ends of our own abilities is a good thing, because it drives us to rely more fully on the all-sufficiency of God in our lives.