Temptations - Security
Week 2: Temptation - Security
Temptation - Security
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew 4:1-4
As we journey with Jesus into the desert we encounter the first temptation - our need for security. Having fasted for 40 days, hungry, and physically weak, Jesus is tempted by Satan to meet a legitimate need in an illegitimate way. Satan questions Jesus identity and then challenges Him to take matters into His own hands.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs clearly shows us that food, clothing, shelter, and our health are some of our most basic needs for survival. Like Jesus, our identity as God’s beloved children is put into question and we are tempted to take our needs into our own hands. Similar to Adam and Eve, Satan calls into question the very goodness of God in our lives prompting us to doubt, “Is God holding out on me? Does He really love me? Is it up to me to make this happen?”
Consider how much of our time, energy, and anxiety is wrapped around finances, our health, and around meeting our most basic needs.
Jesus, knowing how difficult it is to release our need for security, encourages us to trust and to ask our Father who not only knows what we need but desires to provide for us.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread…”
Matthew 6:8-11
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:25-27; 34
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:11
For reflection:
Where am I currently experiencing anxiety and fear in my life?
In what ways am I being tempted to provide my own safety and security rather than depending on God?
Spend a few minutes quieting your mind and your soul and then consider: What do you think God desires for you in these areas?
What might it look like to resist temptation and trust in God during this season?
What is one step you feel ready to take to move you in this new direction?
Drive Me Deep to Face Myself:
Lord, grant me your peace, for I have made peace with what does not give peace, and I am afraid. Drive me deep, now, to face myself so I may see that what I truly need to fear is my capacity to deceive and willingness to be deceived, my loving of things and using of people, my struggle for power and shrinking of soul, my addiction to comfort and sedation of conscience, my readiness to criticize and reluctance to create, my clamor for privilege and silence at injustice, my seeking for security and forsaking the kingdom.
Lord, grant me your peace. Instill in me such fear of you as will begin to make me wise, and such quiet courage as will enable me to begin to make hope visible, forgiving delightful, loving contagious, faith liberating, peace-making joyful and myself open and present to your kingdom.
- Adapted from Ted Loder’s “Drive Me Deep to Face Myself”
