2/22 - Overcoming Temptation

 Greetings St. Andrew's Family

This Sunday, we enter the holy season of Lent. On the First Sunday in Lent, we step with Jesus into the wilderness as told in Gospel of Matthew 4:1–11. Christ is led by the Spirit into a place of hunger, silence, and testing. Temptation does not arrive in chaos, but in quiet. It comes when He is physically weak and spiritually focused. The enemy offers comfort, spectacle, and power. Yet Jesus answers not with argument, but with Scripture. His strength is not loud. It is rooted. It is obedient. It is steadfast.

This Sunday, our music becomes the congregation’s prayer in the wilderness.

When we sing Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah, we give voice to our pilgrim hearts. We are travelers in barren lands, asking for daily bread and steady footing. The hymn reminds us that faith is not self-sufficiency; it is daily dependence.

In Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley, we remember that no temptation we face is foreign to Christ. He has walked it. He has felt it. He has overcome it. The wilderness is not theoretical. It is personal.

As we sing verse one of I Want Jesus to Walk With Me, we are not offering sentimental comfort. We are voicing the deep Lenten cry of the soul that knows it cannot walk alone. Lent strips away illusions of independence and teaches us again how to ask for companionship on the journey.

Our anthem, A Lenten Prayer by Hal Hopson, invites us into humility. Lent is not performance. It is posture. It is the quiet bending of the heart toward God. As it is offered, may this prayer shape our own repentance and longing for grace. The congregation does not simply need beautiful sound; we all need honest intercession.

Even our Doxology, sung to the tune HAMBURG, carries the weight of the cross, so closely associated with When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. The melody calls us to behold Christ’s sacrifice with reverence. And as we are sent with Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days woven with 40 Days by Matt Maher, we acknowledge that Lent is both ancient and present. The wilderness is not only a story from long ago. It is the landscape of our own hearts.

Temptation promises quick satisfaction. Christ models faithful endurance. Through song, we practice that same steadiness. We sing with clarity. We sing with conviction. We sing as those who know the wilderness is not the end of the story. Angels ministered to Jesus. Resurrection awaits beyond the forty days.

Until then, we walk together—sustained by the Word, guided by the Spirit, and strengthened through song.

Blessings as we begin the journey.

Music Tom 

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