It’s simple, really. Even though it’s hard.
We fight battles with temptation, and we so often lose.
Yet, the solution is simple . . . even while it’s a struggle.
You see, I think one of the reasons we lose battles of temptation is that we pray wrongly about them.
Here’ s the way Jesus taught us to pray about temptation: “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matt 6:13). Albert Mohler, my president for many years when I served at Southern Seminary, notes these conclusions about this text:[i]
- First, we must recognize that temptations are a real, daily threat to our life with Christ.
- Second, we must understand that we are not able to resist temptation by our own power.
- Third, we must pray for endurance in the fight against temptation.
- Fourth, we must pray that the Lord delivers us from our own personal patterns of temptation.
What most catches my attention, though, is that Jesus taught us to pray about temptation before we get into it. In fact, that’s the same direction He gave to His apostles in the garden in Luke 22 when He called them to pray with Him: “When He came to the place, He said to them, ‘Pray that you may not enter into temptation’” (v. 40). They were to pray so they would not fall in temptation—not wait until after they had lost a battle to pray . . . which is, I’m convinced, what many of us do.
We might pray during the temptation—though I think we’ve often already turned our hearts away from God when we’re in the process of succumbing to the enemy’s arrows—but I doubt most of pray before the battle is upon us.
If indeed most of our praying about temptation is after the fact, it’s not unexpected that our prayers often sound like, “God, forgive me again.” It shouldn’t surprise us that we often fall in temptation when we don’t pray like Jesus taught us to pray about it in the first place. Perhaps we would win more battles with temptation if we prayed at the start of the day, “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
It’s really that simple . . . even though the battle is still hard.
[i] R. Albert Mohler, The Prayer That Turns the World Upside Down: The Lord’s Prayer as a Manifesto for Revolution (pp. 151-152). Kindle Edition.