Short articles of the, "Yes Jesus" Book on prayer. # 101

 

Repeat after Jesus

“Our Father who art in Heaven.”

“Lead us not into temptation.”

 

In the past I have preferred the watered-down version of this verse that reads: “Keep us from temptation.” If God answers this prayer by keeping us from temptation…then to say “deliver us from the evil one” is not relevant or necessary because we are already kept from temptation.

But to pray “lead us not into temptation” is like the prayer of Jesus in the Garden. “If it is possible, take away this cup. But if you must lead me into it, may your will be done and not mine. I will go through it, but you deliver me from the evil one.”

The issue is that we interpret wrongly the words of the Lord when the Scriptures affirm that God does not tempt anyone. In Matthew 4:1 we read, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” God is not the tempter.

The tempter and deceiver of the brethren is always the devil. Therefore, temptation is the battlefield where the servant of the Lord must defeat the evil one by not renouncing the Cross and by preferring God’s will above everything else. That is why we need deliverance from the evil tempter.

This is the teaching elder on duty in matters of Prayer.

Gerry Gutierrez.