“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'” Matthew 6:9-13 NIV
This verse is the last of the petitions in this prayer. Jesus tells His disciples to ask for direction from God, ask for help in determining what actions to take, what thoughts to pay attention to, what words to say. It is hard to follow God’s will for your life when you don’t know what it is and if you don’t ask to be shown God’s will, you will have a difficult time trying to figure it out on your own. As God’s children we should want to do HIs will and we should not want to sin.
I do not believe that God will lead us into temptation but I do believe that He will not stop temptation from entering our lives. Temptation comes into our lives from several sources, one of which is the natural consequence of our choices in life. This is why it is important to ask God to show us His will, so we can make the choice to follow Him and not whatever our fleshly body desires. Most of the choices we make based on the desires of our flesh, those things we want because we think that they are what is best for us, end up being the source of the temptations in our lives.
Another source is the devil, because the devil places temptations in our paths whenever he wants to, which is why we need to remember the second part of this verse. The second part is where Jesus is saying that we can ask that when temptation comes our way, that God help us to have a way to resist that temptation. This request is naturally something we think of when we are facing temptations we feel we can’t handle, but can be a request that we make each day when we decide to rely on God to help us in every situation.
Jesus prayed to His Father and showed respect and reverence, acknowledging that the Father’s will was what needed to happen. He was in human form and therefore dealt with hunger and temptations. He was perfect and was not in need of forgiveness, but showed us how to forgive others. This prayer is a pattern of how to pray to the Heavenly Father, given to us by Jesus and not a prayer that we are to simply repeat each day.
When I began writing about the Lord’s Prayer 5 days ago, I stated that we should look at each part of the prayer and examine ourselves in that area so that we are not simply repeating the prayer but giving each part careful consideration. I hope the last 5 days have given you a place to start in your own personal journey of what each section means to you. I encourage everyone, including myself, to truly think about what we are praying as we are communicating with the Creator of the world and the universe.