The Lord’s Prayer—Thy Name, Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
In our last
section of the five requests in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to send us into
the world with His protection. This request
does not mention heaven, but it is all about the heavenlies!
It is vital
that we daily take into account what we can and cannot see. It is what we cannot see that has the
greatest power to affect the outcome of each day. Sometimes we think our enemy is our boss, our
spouse, our children—those with whom we have a conflict. They are not our enemy.
As this
prayer attests, we are up against something powerful each day. It is called evil. We are tempted to follow the path of
evil. The Pharisees demonstrate to us
that sometimes the greatest evil looks like religious service.
God’s
remedy to evil is Himself. Notice Jesus
doesn’t teach us to pray for more moral goodness. He doesn’t ask us to pray that we become
righteous on our own. He doesn’t say to
pray that our checkbook reflects how we are such good Christians. Rather, He
teaches us to pray that God shows us the way out of temptation and away from
evil.
Evil is
more evil that our eyes can see. It is
more evil than our spiritual eyes can perceive.
Most of us try to stay away from evil. Don’t Smoke, Drink, Dance, and Chew or Date Girls Who Do is perhaps
in the back of your mind when you think of evil.
It is far
more encompassing than that! Temptation
to evil is temptation to doubt God’s goodness and it confronts us in every
waking moment—and probably as we sleep!
In this prayer Jesus encourages us to daily face up to the reality of
our powerlessness to follow God. Without
taking daily inventory we will naturally follow the path of evil. Most of us won’t even become aware of how
evil we are; we become so comfortable with the evilness to which we adapt.
This is why
the daily prayer (some recommend to pray the Lord’s prayer five times a day)
helps us ask for what we really need.
We are not
fighting an enemy that we can see (Ephesians 6:12—For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but
against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark
world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.)
It is
mandatory to get this reality clear in your prayers and walk with God. We enter each day into a reality we can see
and one we cannot see, measure, or comprehend (the heavenlies). It doesn’t matter, it permeates our
lives. This prayer reminds us of this
fact, and it also shows the way to negotiate through this tricky journey.
We simply
ask God to do it for us. We ask for His
guidance (after all He is the one who can see what we see and beyond). He shows us how to avoid the evil mines that
are all around us.
Pray this
prayer as often as you can with true meaning and it will do what Jesus gave it
to us to do. It will draw your heart to
your wonderful loving Father and the hope of heaven. It will open you to want His good and
pleasing and perfect will and to see that His Kingdom is for now and
later. It will help you connect to the
beautiful gifts He gives you each day and show you how to be like Him and not
be overcome by those who offend you through forgiving them. Lastly, He will show you how to come through
your day unscorched by evil and temptation.
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