Episode Transcript  

One

Wrong Priorities 

We all face temptation. Even Jesus, who is God faced them – so He knows what we go through. 

Immediately after his Baptism, Jesus goes into the desert to pray and fast for forty days in preparation for his ministry. There the devil tempts Him: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into bread.” Jesus responds, “Man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

According to Pope Benedict XVI, this first temptation is not really about hunger. It is about priority.

The temptation is to make something other than God the priority -  material needs, success, security, pleasure, health, or even human relationships—and to treat God as secondary, or as useful only when He solves our problems.

Priority means “most important.” There can’t be more than one priority. 

The goal of our lives is transforming union with God. 

Jesus resists this temptation by establishing his priority – a relationship with His Father in prayer. 

And by the way He lived, Jesus teaches us that our priority must be a relationship with God—setting aside time first to speak with Him from the heart and to listen to Him. When God is no longer first, even good things become idols and enslave us. When God is first, everything else is reordered, and we are free.

Two

Tyranny of the Urgent  

The first temptation is to make something other than God more urgent.

Satan whispers to us: “Listen, work is overwhelming right now, and you can’t ignore the needs of your kids, plus you are exhausted. God is merciful. Take a break today from your prayer. He will always be there for you. You need to veg out and watch a show and sleep a little longer tomorrow. God will understand.”

Everything Satan said might be true: Work may be overwhelming, the kids have endless needs, you probably are exhausted and God is merciful. Satan tells us things that are true to confuse us to get us away from God. One day turns into two, then a week and before we realize it, we have fallen away from prayer for months.  

Do we fall into this trap? Do we take care of the tyranny of the urgent and leave God for later? When we do —are we actually more peaceful? More happy? Or are we simply more tired, more scattered, and more alone?

Three

Reevaluate 

If we are tempted to think we are too busy to spend time with Jesus talking to him from the heart and listening to him, then we need to step back and evaluate our life.

Are we always in a hurry? Are we overcommitted? Did God really ask you to take on all these things? How do you spend the last 90 minutes of each night? What if you went to bed earlier, got the same amount of rest, and reclaimed time in the morning? But don’t get up and give your attention first to news, sports, email, or social media. Give your attention to Jesus. What needs to change in my life so there is time for friendship with God?

Four

A Listening Heart 

Pope Benedict says: “The first and essential thing is a listening heart, so that God, not we, may reign. The Kingdom of God comes by way of a listening heart. That is the path. And that is what we must pray for again and again.” Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth Part 1, p. 145-146

The priority for Jesus, the first and essential thing was listening to His Father each day. Jesus knew that if he did that one thing, everything else will fall into place. 

C.S. Lewis wrote: “put first things first and we get the second things thrown in; put second things first and we lose both first and second things.”

Jesus knew that if He listened to the Father, everything else would be ordered. We must decide whether we believe the same is true for us.

Five

De-evolution 

The mountain where Jesus faced His first temptation stands near Jericho, the world’s oldest continually inhabited city.

Before Jericho, people were hunters and gatherers—too preoccupied with survival to reflect deeply on life. But with agriculture, they gained time to ponder life’s greatest questions: Where do we come from? What is our purpose? What happens after death? This led to prayer, to conversation, and to true friendship—with God and with one another.

But today, we have devolved. We have returned to the relentless busyness of the hunter-gatherer, claiming we have no time to think, pray, or cultivate real relationships.

This is the Devil’s temptation: “Jesus, get busy—turn these stones into bread.” The lie is that productivity matters more than a relationship with God, that busyness is virtue. But to be constantly busy is to be “Be Under Satan’s Yoke.”

Jesus shows us a different way: not grasping for the fleeting, but trusting in the Father’s providence and spending time in worship and prayer. Will we imitate Him?

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