Mark 1:9-13: in context

Mark tells the beginning of Jesus' ministry with breathless speed. Jesus comes from Nazareth and is baptized by John in the Jordan; and as he comes up from the water, he sees the heavens torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice comes from heaven: you are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And then, immediately, the same Spirit that has just descended drives him out into the wilderness, where he spends forty days tempted by Satan, among the wild animals, with the angels serving him.

Two things about this compressed account repay attention. The first is that the Father declares Jesus his beloved Son before Jesus has done anything, before a single sermon or miracle or day of public ministry. The words are not earned by achievement; they are spoken at the outset, over a man who has, as far as the public record goes, only just stepped forward. The belovedness comes first, freely, as the ground of everything that follows rather than the reward for it. That is how God's love works toward those who are his: it is declared over us before we accomplish anything, an identity given rather than earned. The second thing is what comes immediately after: the very Spirit that descended in blessing drives Jesus straight into the wilderness to be tested. The mountaintop of the baptism is followed at once by forty days of temptation in the desert. The blessing did not exempt him from the wilderness; it prepared him for it, and it was precisely his settled identity as the beloved Son that Satan would attack and that would hold him firm. There is a pattern here for the life of faith. The word of belovedness is given first, before we have proved anything, and then the testing comes, often right on its heels; and it is that secure identity, received as a gift, that carries us through the wilderness when it comes.

Do I know that God's word of belovedness is spoken over me before I have achieved anything, an identity given and not earned, and can that secure identity carry me through the wilderness of testing that so often follows the blessing?