“‘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.’”
Have you memorized it yet? I bet many of us have. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer morning and evening this past month has been such a great practice for me. It’s honestly becoming unnatural for me to just “jump into” prayer like I used to do. I find myself pausing—pausing to make his name holy, proclaiming Father, it’s your will I want to be done, not mine; God, you rule better than I do. I’m more mindful of my daily dependence on God for my every need. And it has humbled me to recognize just how much I have been forgiven of, and therefore what excuse do I have, to not forgive others?
We’ve reached the last line of the prayer….Lord, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.
Wait, what? Is there a chance that God could tempt us? No. Not a chance.
James, the little brother of Jesus, assures us in the first chapter of his book, that God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. We can trust where he leads us.
I love the honesty of this last line of the Lord’s prayer, Jesus is preparing his followers for reality. Temptation, deliverance, and evil are all very real!
Because when I pray, “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it almost feels like by praying those words, it’s gonna be easy, somehow everything is just gonna fall into place perfectly. Right?
But Jesus is saying that the reality of “my kingdom come”—in a sin-stained world, is that you’re gonna face trials, troubles, testings, and temptations. John 16:33, Jesus says “In this world you will have trouble… The “following Jesus” way of life would not be easy for his disciples then, nor his disciples today. It will require denying myself. Followers will face persecution from man and attacks from the evil one. Jesus never sugar-coats the life he’s calling us to imitate.
But here’s the best news of all, the exclamation point of the whole Lord’s prayer–
OUR DAD DELIVERS!
We have a Father who can and will rescue his children from the evil one, the enemy of our souls. The rest of John 16:33, Jesus says, “take heart! I have overcome the world.” He’s already won. Salvation is mine.
Amen.
Donielle Winter