Glory in the Wilderness
Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.”
“Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say,
‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” -Matthew 4:8-10, NLT
“We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way- centered on money or pleasure or ambition- and hoping in spite of this to behave honestly, chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do….the real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in…now we are letting Him work at the right part of us… He never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, ‘Be perfect,’ He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder- in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are all eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity pgs. 198-199.
One of the more difficult temptations to overcome is that which inflames our hunger for glory. March Madness, of the NCAA basketball kind is at a fever pitch right now. As a boy, I loved the game of basketball. I can remember hours of playing ball in the driveway and me being the commentator for my own ‘game winning’ shot. I think almost every kid who bounces a ball can. Here is the trouble though, not many kids will grow up to play in the NCAA, still fewer will hoist a game winner, with 2 seconds left, to knock off Duke, and win a national championship. So, we go chasing glory other ways. Some of us in other athletic pursuits, some of us through academics or music or theater or some other niche. The channel doesn’t matter. It is what we are after via that channel. We want glory. The shine that comes from being recognized as elite. We want our name in lights or the 2026 equivalent.
We are hungry for glory and in the wilderness, it’s hard to come by. Into this dilemma our nemesis, our Adversary, steps. He offers us glory in exchange for so much of our time, our attention, our energy, our effort. He knows that, at least initially, he cannot fool us into giving away everything for glory; but he’s playing a long game. “Give them a taste and they’ll be back for more,” is his modis operandi. And, sadly without a stronger help than our willpower and good intentions, he will be right over and over and over again. How do we avoid this glory trap? Only if we die to it. We must not be okay with going round the edges when it comes to pride. If we do, it will eat us alive. We must be willing to let our kingdom building die with Christ. He has asked no less of us (Matthew 16:24-25). Any time we choose to die to ourselves and our pursuit of glory so that we can follow Jesus more fully, our Adversary loses sway in our lives. His sham glitz and glamour are more easily identified when we start to understand that our glory isn’t to terminate with us. We are here to glorify (read here worship) God and Him only. You can’t beat the glories of the kingdom of this world unless you realize that you don’t belong to this kingdom and aren’t beholden to it’s king. You are a worshiper of King Jesus. You and I are meant to build His Kingdom. And His kingdom will endure forever. As we journey in the wilderness, and now step into this amazing week of worship opportunities, I pray that we find ourselves humbly glorifying Jesus every step of the way.
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