When Jesus was born, a number of people seem to have had an inkling of what his vocation was to be; but he himself, a tiny baby, cannot have had the remotest idea of what his vocation was, unless we are living in a world of Magic. And sadly, we have only one small glimpse of his spiritual development, before his baptism; and that is the story of his being in the Temple talking to the Elders for three days, while his parents looked for him in vain. But the Almighty must have been intensely interested is his upbringing and development, to see if anything was happening that might jeopardize the chances of baby Jesus fulfilling his vocation, when he grew up. The Almighty, the Creator, takes huge risks. There was nothing to compel the Virgin Mary to say "Yes" rather than "No"; nothing to prevent the adult Jesus from putting his own happiness first. Many people do. But the Almighty is not irresponsible.
So in the desert, He will have watched over Jesus being tempted, even if it was not possible for Him to intervene. Had He made it easier for Jesus, then probably Jesus would have done all that was expected of him, until the final conflict, until Gethsemane. Then he would have found that too much. He would probably have funked the ordeal. Nowadays most people would funk it. How would the Almighty, without interfering, make as sure as He could that Jesus would face his suffering? I have already answered that question in Man’s Relationship with God. You would share your Immortality with him.
Suppose we leave all the Church’s problems behind, and imagine instead that Jesus believed that He was immortal, and was confident in that belief? One finds, I think, that everything in the Gospels falls into place. Was he right, or was he wrong?
Sooner or later we all have to face the awful mystery, which is reality. Most of us assume this will happen when we die. That is why we fear death, or drug our lives with experiences to keep the fear of death away from the conscious mind. But suppose a man dares to believe he has an indwelling with the Almighty, the Creator, as Jesus did, what then? Has he faced the awful reality? If not, what more must he do? Not much good asking Jesus what more one should do. Jesus was hopelessly wrong in expecting the consummation of all things to come about relatively soon, and by divine intervention; and he may have been hopelessly wrong about much that he said in the Last Discourses too.
His promise to do anything we asked him to do, anything at all, provided only we asked in his name, is not something that is commonly experienced, if it is experienced by anyone at all. Of course we can make excuses for nothing happening by saying one did not have enough faith in Jesus. But there comes a time when such excuses wear a little thin. It is unwise to get lost in a world of fantasy; it is the beginning of madness. And if you have dreams in your mind or imagination, which no.one else shares, not even God, have you not set foot on the slippery road to madness. Yet to have dreams, which you are able to persuade others to share, is the very art of leadership! It is a fine line between the two conditions.
In ordinary social life, however close a friendship may be, one always finds that eventually there is a limit to the extent that one can get to know another person, in my experience. Except perhaps if there is a sense of communion between them. But without that, does one not always come up against a barrier, beyond which for some extraordinary reason it seems impossible to go? Indeed one of the most insidious temptations of evil is to lure an individual into thinking that he will win a sense of communion with someone, by committing sin with that person. If he falls, he soon realizes it was a fantasy. Committing sin immediately thwarts any true communion, by creating distrust. But Jesus may have had the flair, or gift, of forming a sense of communion with anyone he chose to. This may have been the basis of his ability to heal; the ability to give to anyone the sense he or she had a communion with Jesus, if only for a moment while they overcame their disease or disability.