Don't take the bait: Day 3

The quickest way to lose your peace is to start living like your life is a performance. When your worth depends on being noticed, praised, and affirmed, you end up chasing a crowd and calling it influence. We talk about a tactic Scripture names plainly: the pride of life, the desperate need to matter to other people, and why it feels so natural in an age of social media, personal branding, and constant comparison. 

We walk through the moment in Matthew chapter four where the devil tempts Jesus at the temple, not just with danger but with the promise of public recognition. That same temptation shows up today as doom scrolling, checking likes, and believing the lie that if other people validate you, you’ll finally feel valuable. We push back with a deeper truth: you already matter because God loves you, and Christ proves that love without you earning it through applause. 

Then we get practical about what real influence looks like. Digital metrics can feel big, but God’s work is often deep and local: family, coworkers, neighbors, students, and the people you interact with every day. We close with a concrete action step designed to kill pride at the root: do something tangibly helpful for someone, then do it in absolute secret with no post, no credit, and no recognition, serving an audience of one. If this encouraged you, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review, and tell us where you feel the most pressure to perform.

Transcript

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Good morning. It's Pastor Josh, and I'm so glad that at 6 a.m. you chose to listen to this before you did anything else. I'm sure that's not what happened. But I am happy that you are here. And if these matter to you, please take a moment, subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, share with someone you know, and help us push this out to everyone. Because our our goal this week, as we look at don't take the bait, is sitting here looking at our lives and going, you know what, we're gonna stand up, we're gonna fight back against the devil. And today we are looking at the audience of one. So let's get into the rundown. The second tactic the devil uses is what the Bible calls the pride of life. In Matthew chapter four, the devil takes Jesus up onto the pinnacle of the temple, right where all the religious crowds are gathered, and essentially tells them, jump off, God will catch you. But then everyone will see it and they will know how important you really are. They will know you are the son of the living God. The pride of life is just that. It's a desperate, exhausting need to matter to other people. I could sum it up honestly in two words. Social media. We spend our time trying to build our brand, trying to push our narrative, trying to get our kingdom to grow. We spend hours just doom scrolling. We try to build our own personal brands online. We spend so much time checking just to see if someone we haven't even talked to in the past 20 years happened to like our last post. And we live a life believing the lie that if I matter to others, then I'll finally matter to myself. But the truth is, is you already matter. You matter so much to the creator of the universe, to the God that said, let there be light, that he sent his only begotten son, that whomever believes in him shall not perish. You already matter enough because God loves you. You don't need a crowd to validate your worth. You don't need other people to show you how important you are, because Christ demonstrates his love in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And that is exactly the challenge for us today. See, it's easy to lose our focus and start valuing a broad, shallow recognition over deep, localized impact. See, we want the digital metrics, but we need to remember that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. True influence doesn't happen by getting approval from Mary and Cedar Rapids that you've never even met before. Not that we don't appreciate that. We love stuff like that. But it happens, true influence happens by pouring into the people right in front of you. Your family, your coworkers, students you teach, people at the grocery store, your mailman, the folks that are right here in your own community. See if you keep going for your own glory, God will humble you. But it's a lot less painful to just humble yourself. So our action step today is this do something tangibly helpful for someone in your local community, someone you work with, someone who lives at your house. But here's the catch you have to do it in absolute secret. Don't post about it, don't take a selfie why doing it, don't record yourself, don't even tell the other person you're the one that did it. Receive zero credit for it. Kill the pride of life today by serving an audience of one. And I can't wait to talk to you tomorrow.