The 4:11 Strategy
There is a version of me that shows up when I’m rested, healthy, connected to God, and operating from a full tank.
And then there is the version of me that shows up when I’m exhausted.
If I’m being transparent, those two people don’t always look the same.
I have learned that depletion reveals things about me that comfort can hide.
When I am tired, my patience gets shorter. My emotions become louder. My ability to discern what is true versus what I merely feel becomes more difficult. Things that would normally roll off my shoulders suddenly feel personal. Small disappointments feel bigger than they are.
The older I get, the more I realize that some of my greatest spiritual battles have not happened during moments of obvious crisis.
They happened when I was simply worn down.
Matthew 4 begins with a fascinating detail.
Jesus had just been baptized. Heaven had opened. The Father had spoken. The Spirit had descended.
Then immediately afterward, Scripture says:
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1)
That verse has challenged me for years.
The wilderness was not evidence that God had abandoned Jesus.
The wilderness was part of God’s preparation.
We often think spiritual warfare is only about resisting obvious evil. Sometimes spiritual warfare looks like surviving a season that is taking longer than you expected.
Sometimes it looks like continuing to trust God when you don’t understand what He’s doing.
Sometimes it looks like learning how to function while running on empty.
The enemy knows something about human beings.
We are often more vulnerable when we are depleted.
Not necessarily because we are evil.
Because we are tired.
Tired people can become impulsive.
Tired people can become discouraged.
Tired people can become self-destructive.
Tired people can start questioning things they once felt confident about.
The enemy doesn’t always need to destroy us.
Sometimes he simply wants to wear us out.
Looking back, one of the clearest wilderness seasons of my life began in 2015.
Life had hit me hard.
Heartbreak.
Change.
Questions I didn’t have answers to.
A deep feeling that God was asking me to leave behind everything familiar and move to Louisiana.
At the time, I couldn’t fully explain it. I just knew I needed to go.
What followed was one of the most transformative seasons of my life.
The wilderness wasn’t empty. It was complicated.
There was grief, but there was also hope.
There was loneliness, but there was also discovery.
For the first time, I was connecting with family members I never knew existed. I was learning stories about my parents that had been lost to me for years. Pieces of my history that had always felt missing suddenly started finding their way back to me.
It felt like God was slowly handing me fragments of a puzzle I didn’t even realize I had been carrying my entire life.
Yet wilderness seasons rarely come one challenge at a time.
Within a year, my aunt passed away.
Just when I felt like I was finding my footing, another wave of grief arrived.
That is what wilderness seasons often feel like. You’re healing while simultaneously hurting. You’re discovering while grieving. You’re hopeful while carrying questions. You’re seeing God’s goodness while still trying to understand His timing.
Nothing is fully settled.
You are no longer who you were, but you aren’t yet who you’re becoming.
And somehow, God does some of His deepest work there.
I think that’s why so many of us resist these seasons.
We want arrival.
God often wants development.
We want answers.
God often wants trust.
One of the harder lessons for me has been understanding childlike faith.
Jesus said:
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)
That sounds beautiful until you realize how difficult that can be for some of us.
I didn’t grow up knowing what it felt like to simply be a child.
My mother died when I was young.
The very next day I entered an abusive environment.
The adults who were supposed to provide safety became a source of fear.
My older brother eventually ran away because he couldn’t take it anymore.
I stayed.
When you grow up like that, dependence doesn’t feel natural.
You learn self-protection.
You learn hypervigilance.
You learn how to carry things you were never meant to carry.
You become responsible long before you’re ready.
So when God says, “Trust Me,” it sounds simple.
But for someone who learned early that people could disappear, disappoint, or hurt you, trust can feel like warfare.
Childlike faith has always been one of my battlefields.
Not because I don’t love God.
Not because I don’t believe in God.
Because somewhere deep inside me, I learned survival before I learned dependence.
I never really knew what it was to be a child.
So when Scripture talks about coming to God with childlike faith, there is a part of me that has had to learn what that even means.
To trust.
To rest.
To believe someone stronger than me is paying attention.
To stop carrying responsibilities that were never mine to begin with.
The Holy Spirit has spent years teaching me what it means to rest in a Father who doesn’t leave.
Teaching me that not everything is my responsibility.
Teaching me that strength isn’t carrying everything.
Strength is knowing when to hand it over.
One thing I have learned is that both God and the enemy want to use your wilderness season, but for very different reasons.
The enemy wants to use it to convince you that you’ve been abandoned.
God wants to use it to teach you that He is enough.
The enemy uses wilderness for isolation.
God uses wilderness for preparation.
The enemy uses wilderness to create panic.
God uses wilderness to create trust.
The question is not whether you’ll experience a wilderness season.
The question is who gets to define it.
Matthew 4:11 says something beautiful after Jesus overcomes every temptation:
“Then the devil left Him, and angels came and attended Him.”
I love that verse because Jesus won.
But He was still tired.
The battle was over, but He still needed ministry.
He still needed strengthening.
He still needed care.
That reality has given me permission to be human.
There are seasons where we overcome and still need recovery.
Seasons where we remain faithful and still need rest.
Seasons where we trust God and still need His Spirit to sustain us.
The older I get, the more I think one of the greatest lies we believe is that everything depends on us.
It doesn’t.
There are demands in life that will always exceed our strength.
There will be responsibilities we cannot carry alone.
There will be seasons that require more than we have available.
That isn’t failure.
That’s humanity.
And maybe that’s the point.
Depletion reveals our limitations so we can discover God’s sufficiency.
The truth is, there are days coming when we will wish we had this time back.
The ordinary Tuesday.
The coffee before work.
The phone call we rushed through.
The season we spent trying to survive instead of noticing.
One day we’ll realize those moments were gifts.
That realization has changed how I pray.
Less “God, get me out of this.”
More “Holy Spirit, help me walk through this.”
Because I cannot do this life without Him.
I cannot heal without Him.
I cannot steward my time without Him.
I cannot navigate wilderness seasons without Him.
I cannot become the woman God created me to be without Him.
And I certainly cannot learn childlike faith without Him.
The 4:11 strategy is simple.
When you’re running on empty, don’t pretend you’re full.
Acknowledge it.
Ask for help.
Accept your limitations.
Stop believing everything depends on your strength.
Stop carrying things God never asked you to carry.
Cast them onto the One who can.
Because sometimes winning doesn’t mean avoiding the wilderness.
Sometimes winning means trusting God enough to walk through it.
And when you can go no further, discovering that the same Holy Spirit who led you there is also the One who will sustain you until the other side.