When Want Whispers

Lent is the forty–day journey that leads us toward Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday and stretches to Holy Saturday, the quiet day before Resurrection Sunday. Those forty days are not random; they mirror the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting, praying, and facing temptation before beginning His public ministry.

Historically, Lent has never been about earning God’s love or proving spiritual seriousness. The love of God is already secure in Christ. Instead, Lent is about clarity. It is about creating space in our lives so we can see what has been shaping us beneath the surface. It is a season of repentance, prayer, and fasting not because God is distant, but because we often live distracted.

When we remove something we rely on—food, noise, media, constant input—we begin to notice what rises to the surface. We discover what we instinctively reach for when we are uncomfortable. We begin to hear the quieter voices beneath the loud ones. Lent is serious, but it is not gloomy. It is hopeful. It invites us into the wilderness not to shame us, but to form us.

It prepares us to walk toward the cross in such a way that Easter does not feel casual or sentimental, but weighty and glorious. When we walk through the wilderness honestly, we rejoice more deeply in the resurrection.

This year our series is called “I Shall Not Want,” because want is loud in our culture. Urgency is loud. The world constantly whispers that we need more, we need it now, and we cannot afford to fall behind. In this first week of Lent, we are naming one of the most subtle and powerful whispers of all: the whisper of urgency.

The bottom line is simple but searching: urgency trains us to grasp, while trust trains us to receive.

The Trap of Urgency

Many of us are not physically exhausted; we are soul–tired. We are tired of reacting. Tired of checking. Tired of feeling as though something always demands our immediate attention. Urgency hums in the background of our lives, telling us that we must respond quickly or risk losing control.

If we do not confront urgency, urgency will disciple us. It will shape how we think, how we interpret events, how we speak to one another, and even how we hear God. It becomes a reflex, a nervous system response that says, “Act now. Fix this. Secure yourself.”

We see this dynamic clearly in the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4. The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness, and that detail matters deeply. This is not accidental suffering; it is intentional formation. After forty days of fasting, Jesus is hungry and physically depleted. In that vulnerable state, the tempter approaches and says, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

On the surface, that suggestion seems reasonable. Hunger is real. Bread would solve the problem. But the temptation is not fundamentally about bread; it is about immediacy and control. It is about solving discomfort right now rather than trusting the Father’s timing.

The enemy does not begin with something blatantly evil. He begins with something urgent. “If you are the Son of God… prove it.” Urgency feels responsible. It feels mature. It feels proactive. We tell ourselves we need to stay informed, we need to manage the situation, we need to get ahead of what might happen.

But Jesus responds with something deeper than reaction: “Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” There is something more essential than immediate relief, and that is trust.

Dallas Willard once said that hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day, and that we must ruthlessly eliminate it. Hurry and urgency train our reflexes to grasp; trust retrains those reflexes to receive.

As the temptations escalate—throw yourself down from the temple, take the kingdoms of the world without the cross—we see the same pattern. Each offer presents a shortcut, a way to bypass waiting and suffering. Each temptation invites Jesus to grasp what the Father has already promised to give in due time.

Urgency always invites us to seize control instead of surrendering it.

Two Ways to Be Human

The wilderness scene echoes another garden. In Romans 5, Paul draws a line from Adam to Christ, from one man’s disobedience to another man’s obedience. Through Adam, sin entered the world. Through one act of grasping, death spread to all.

In Genesis 3, the serpent whispered, “You will be like God. You will not die. Take it now.” Adam and Eve were not starving. They were not abandoned. They were surrounded by provision. But the whisper of urgency reframed everything, convincing them that something essential was being withheld. They grasped rather than trusted.

Humanity has been running on that reflex ever since.

Paul tells us that through one trespass came condemnation for everyone, but through one righteous act came justification and life. Where Adam grasped, Jesus trusted. Where Adam reached, Jesus received. Where Adam doubted the Father’s goodness, Jesus rested in it.

This is not merely theological abstraction; it is a description of two different ways to be human. Jesus did not come only to forgive our grasping. He came to retrain our wants and restore our true humanity as image–bearers of God. Salvation is not simply about securing our future; it is about reshaping our present.

It is about retraining our reflexes so that when urgency whispers, we do not automatically reach.

Eugene Peterson wrote that the way of Jesus cannot be imposed or mapped but requires active participation in following. Trust is practiced. Patience is practiced. Receiving rather than grasping is practiced. Jesus shows us a new way to live, one that does not depend on immediate validation, constant information, or short-term control.

He shows us what it means to live on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Who Is Forming You?

Lent exposes something we would rather ignore: we are always being formed by something. The voices we listen to and the habits we repeat slowly shape our instincts.

In recent years, Americans have spent significant hours each week consuming news and social media, while the average time spent in gathered worship or Scripture is comparatively small. The point is not to shame but to ask an honest question: who is discipling us most consistently?

If urgency occupies our minds for hours every day while Scripture receives only fragments of attention, we should not be surprised when urgency feels more natural than trust.

Lent gives us an opportunity to disrupt that pattern. You do not live on headlines. You do not live on notifications. You do not live on the constant churn of information. You live on the Word of God.

Two of the fruits of the Spirit are patience and self-control, both of which directly confront urgency. Both require a deep confidence that God is not late, not inattentive, and not withholding good from His children.

That is why a corporate news media fast during Lent is not about demonizing news but about reclaiming formation. When we step away from the constant flow of urgency-driven content, we begin to notice what it has built in us. We may feel restless. We may feel disconnected. We may feel anxious. That exposure is not failure; it is invitation.

It invites us to replace that habit with something intentional—slowly reading through a Gospel, sitting in silence, walking outside and noticing creation, enjoying conversation without screens, allowing God’s voice to speak before the world’s.

When we change our habits, we change our formation. When we change our formation, our reflexes begin to shift. We may discover peace where there was anxiety, patience where there was reactivity, and a growing realization that we do not need to know everything immediately because Christ is sufficient.

Urgency trains us to grasp. Trust trains us to receive.

Questions for Reflection

1. What urgency currently shapes your reactions the most, and how does it influence your relationships and spiritual life?
2. What might change in your heart if you let God speak before the headlines each day during this season of Lent?
3. Where do you notice yourself grasping for control rather than receiving what the Father is already giving?

Living Differently in the Wilderness

When Paul writes about Adam and Christ in Romans 5, he is presenting more than doctrine; he is describing two trajectories for human life. Through Adam’s grasping came fracture and death. Through Christ’s obedience comes restoration and life.

In the wilderness, when urgency whispered to Jesus, He trusted the Father. When hunger pressed in, He trusted. When power and recognition were offered early, He trusted. He refused to grasp what had already been promised.

Through Him, we are no longer bound to the old reflex.

Tomorrow morning the phone will buzz, the headlines will still exist, and the world will continue to shout urgency. But we are not powerless in that environment. We can choose who forms us first. We can breathe before reacting, pray before responding, and wait before grasping.

The Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness now forms us in our own.

Through Christ, we are invited into a different way of being human—a way marked not by panic but by peace, not by control but by trust. If Christ is sufficient, then urgency does not have the final word. Slowly, steadily, and with intention, we learn to say what once felt impossible:

I shall not want.