Last Saturday, in The Perfect Prayer, Part 7, we saw that in order to maintain our relationship with God, to save our hearts, minds and souls from the poisonous darts of unresolved anger, and to avoid being hypocritical, we must forgive others when they have hurt us. We must come to the place where we ask God to reveal our unforgiveness, to hate it as much as He does, to desire to forgive, and to look to God for the ability to forgive.
It’s hard to say which line of this Perfect Prayer is the most important. What I find the most interesting is that each line of this prayer is programmed to draw us deeper and deeper into a beautiful relationship with God, and to give us all the tools we need to survive in this world. We are first encouraged to know who He is, to want to honour the holiness of His name. Next we are encouraged to desire for principles of God’s kingdom to be worked into our hearts and for His will to be done in our lives. Next we are encouraged to depend upon God for … everything! Then we are told to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness as we also forgive others! These are designed to free us of our sin so that nothing stands between us and God. But there is another vital aspect to our walk with Christ: Staying out of the devil’s traps in the first place! And today, we begin to look at God’s ability to help us do just that: “Do not lead us into temptation…” (Matthew 6:13a NASB)
I don’t know about you, but this particular line has always puzzled me. How can God “lead” us into temptation? Doesn’t James tells us, “No one is to say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” (James 1:13 NASB)? We also know that God hates sin. So why do we need to beg Him, “Please don’t lead us into temptation”?
We all need God’s help to overcome temptation. I believe we’ve all proven this to ourselves over and over again: Apart from God, we can do … nothing (See John 15:5). Therefore, when we pray and ask God to not lead us into temptation, we are, in essence, admitting that we cannot overcome temptation on our own. This place of humility is vital in our walk with God.
As good of an answer as the above paragraph gives, it still doesn’t answer the question, why do we need to beg God to do what He already wants to do?
To answer this, I believe we need to have a clear Biblical understanding of what it means to “lead”. We all understand that the idea of God leading His people is a central theme in Scripture. The Psalms alone are full of requests for God to lead us in His ways (See Psalms 5:8; 27:11, 139:24, etc.). Thus, we can understand that when we ask God to lead us towards what is right, we are in essence asking Him to lead us away from what isn’t. When Jesus included this line in the perfect prayer, the idea He wants us to express is that we desire to avoid sin altogether. We are in essence asking God to not permit us to be tempted by sin.
But haven’t we just gone full-circle? We already know from James 1:15 that, “God …does not tempt anyone”! Why, then, would we need to ask Him to not permit us to sin?
What this line teaches us is a very important Truth: God has enough control to save us from the devil’s power when we call upon Him! So in essence, when we say, “Do not lead us into temptation…” we are acknowledging that God has control over the devil’s power; we are formally recognizing that calling upon God will save us from the devil’s traps; and we are humbling ourselves to admit that we don’t have that power, that we are dependent upon Him – and not upon our own efforts – in overcoming temptation!
In summary then, this little line finds itself in the perfect prayer because we need to acknowledge that we can’t overcome temptation. We need to recognize God’s ability to keep us out of temptation. We need to put our utmost trust in His ability to guide our feet in the way they should go! I encourage each of you during this upcoming week to continue praying the Lord’s Prayer daily. This week, however, spend special time meditating on this one line: “Do not lead us into temptation…” Ask God to reveal temptation to you before you fall into its traps. Ask God to help you hate temptation as much as He does, to want to avoid the devil’s traps. Then make a statement of faith that God can and will lead you in the ways of righteousness: “Do not lead us into temptation…” When you do, you will begin to notice how temptations are brought to your awareness before you fall into them, how temptation in general, suddenly loses its appeal to you, and especially, how easy it suddenly is to avoid it!
But “Do not lead us into temptation…” is only half of the last verse of Jesus’ Perfect Prayer. Join us next Saturday for, “…But Deliver Us From Evil: The Perfect Prayer, Part 9.”
In His love,
Lyn
Lynona Gordon Chaffart
Author, Moderator, Acting Director, Answers2Prayer Ministries
(To access the entire published portion of “The Perfect Prayer” mini-series, please click here!)
