Jesus's Teaching on Prayer, Part 9
Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Matthew 6v13a
31st October 2025
We've prayed, "Give us our daily bread", asking God to provide for our material needs and acknowledging our total dependence on His provision. We've prayed, "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors", confessing that we have sinned and acknowledging our need of God's mercy. We now pray:
Matthew 6v13a
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
When we pray we co-operate with God in the working out of His purposes. We also pray because prayer does us good. It changes us. This is, perhaps, particularly true of this petition. When we pray this prayer, we realize how very weak we are, how corrupt we are, how selfish we are, how fleshly we are. We need to pray, "Lead us not into temptation", asking that we will be less tempted to sin in the future.
We need to ask God to help us to conquer our lower selves, our fleshly selves. We need to pray that God will change our hearts to make us pure, so that we will only what is pure, holy and good. And because we're weak, we need to pray that God will protect us from the situations that would cause us to fall into sin.
As we pray this prayer, we remember those temptations that we find particularly alluring. We need to pray that God will make us wise so that we avoid the places, relationships and experiences where we are particularly likely to fall. We see more clearly that we have a responsibility to act wisely. If you're an alcoholic, don't enter an off licence. If you're a gossip, don't spend too much time with other gossips. And so on. We pray for wisdom and self-control.
We also need to pray this petition because temptation is, well, tempting. We like a bit of temptation, we can enjoy dallying with the idea of sin, even if we don't actually commit that sin. But dallying with the idea of sin is, surely, also sin.
The truth is, we won't be protected from all temptation. But this is a good prayer. It's good to want to be protected. And God will answer it to the degree that His perfect wisdom and His perfect plan allow. When we pray this prayer, we find the state of our own hearts. We often realize that there's some adjustment to be done in our hearts, in the things we daydream about and in the choices we make.
Also, as I've mentioned several times in these studies, the Lord's Prayer is to be made in the first person plural, not the first person singular. We pray for ourselves and also for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Some may have told us confidentially about some of the temptations they struggle with. We must respect that confidentiality. The only person we can talk to about it is God. We can pray for those fellow-Christians who - like us - are not perfect, that God will protect them from the temptations that cause them such difficulties, and strengthen them to resist temptations when they come.
We will consider the second half of this petition next time.