Battling Temptation with Prayer

And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. Matt 6:13

Are you struggling with temptation?  You are not alone. Even though we may not talk about it, all Christians experience that struggle. There is no point at which the believer graduates from temptation.  Sometimes you get the picture that the struggle to succumb to temptation is something that only new Christians struggle with. That is not the case. The truth is that you have weaknesses just as I do.  There are certain areas of our lives where we all battle the flesh. To make matters worse, the Bible tells us that our “adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”(1 Peter 5:8) Yes it is true. Christians have an adversary, the Devil, and he wants to make us give in to temptation and disobey God. We all have different areas that we struggle with, certain propensities to sin, and our adversary knows just where they are and what buttons to push to try and make us give in.

When we pray “do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one”, we begin to acknowledge the battle against temptation. And as the old saying goes, acknowledging that there is an problem it the first step in curing it. In humility we are saying “Lord I know that have areas in my flesh that I struggle with and I am confessing I need Your mercy and grace.”  God can, and does, give you the grace you need to stand up to the temptation and resist the evil one.

When we use the Lord’s Prayer as our blueprint, we begin our day by addressing the fact that certain temptations will come our way and we will struggle with them. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge your struggles to God.  He knows them anyway. Ask Him for the grace to overcome them, and He will answer.  

A Prayer Request and Barometer of Your Faith

¹² And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors… ¹⁴ For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Matt 6:12, 14-15

In Jesus’s model prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, He instructs His disciples to pray to the Father for forgiveness of their debts (sins). We are not simply to pray “forgive us our sins” but rather “forgive us as we forgive others”. In other words “Father, just like I have forgiven others their sins, please forgive mine.” “Father please do for me what I have done for others.” Is this a prayer you can wholeheartedly pray? Have you forgiven others of their sins? Are you holding out forgiveness? If that sounds harsh, what Jesus says afterwards is even more sobering. “But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” This should cause us to do some serious soul searching.

If Jesus is saying that in order for God to forgive us we must forgive others, does that make forgiveness a work necessary for salvation? Salvation is by faith not works. Romans 4 says “⁵ But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.” So what does that say about Jesus’s statement that God will not forgive us if we do not forgive others? The answer is found in a parable Jesus shared on forgiveness. In Matthew 18 Jesus told a parable of a man who owed a king a great debt.  The man could not pay and begged the king to show him mercy.  The king did and forgave the man’s debt.   The same man went out and found someone who owed him money and demanded to be paid. The other man begged for mercy asking to be forgiven his debt, but the man would not.  When the king found out that the man he had forgiven would not forgive another man’s debt, he was furious. He rebuked him saying “should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’” (Matthew 18:33) The king then threw him in prison until he could pay all his debt.  The point of the parable is that once God has forgiven you, you are expected to forgive others. Why would a man who was forgiven a great debt refuse to forgive another man his debt? The answer is that the man was not truly repentant in his heart. He just wanted to get out of a jam. When he got out of the jam he went back to being his old miserable self. In the same way our hearts are exposed when we have a chance to forgive others. If we realize just how much God did for us by forgiving us, we should jump at the chance to forgive others. How could we who received so much mercy not do anything but lavish mercy on others? If you refuse to forgive others it may show that you never really repented and turned to Jesus in the first place.

Make this process part of your daily prayer life. Ask God to forgive your sins and search your own heart to see if you are holding out forgiveness on someone else.

Prayer Is Not An Exercise In Futility

Give us this day our daily bread. Matt 6:11

This is the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus instructs us to pray for our needs. I would like to make three short observations about asking the Lord to “Give us this day our daily bread.”  

1. We are told to ask.  This point may sound simple, but some people think that God does not want to be bothered by someone asking Him to meet their needs. People reason that God has much larger issues to handle so He can’t be bothered by their prayer requests.  Or for whatever the reason, some people just don’t ask. The bottom line is that Jesus tells us to ask and if Jesus tells us to ask, we are to ask.

2. We are told to ask for our needs. Bread is a need. You have needs, and you have plenty of them. Give them to God and believe that He will meet them. A few years ago I needed wisdom in a big way. I came to a decision, but I was a little hesitant to act on it. “What if I am making the wrong choice?”  I finally came to the realization that I had asked God for wisdom. God promises to provide that wisdom, so why did I not believe that He gave it to me.  That is true about many or all of the needs we ask God for. If He tells us to ask for our needs, He will meet our needs. Ask and believe. A jobless Christian who asks the Lord to provide food for his family should not worry if His children are going to go to bed hungry.

3. We are told to ask for our immediate needs. It is not a mistake that Jesus said to ask for our “daily bread”. If you think Jesus just kind of threw the word “daily” in there, keep reading Matthew 6. In verses 25-34 Jesus goes to great length to tell us not to worry about what we will need tomorrow, but to trust God for our immediate needs and let tomorrow take care of itself. You have needs today; pray for them, when tomorrow comes pray for the needs that arise at that time.

The thing that hinders prayer the most is unbelief. Jesus tells us to pray for the needs of today. He is not giving us an exercise in futility. Instead of worrying about our needs, ask God for them. Believe He will provide. He can be taken at His Word.  

Standing Against Unrighteousness

Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven. Matt. 6:10

God is good. He has given us the privilege of prayer so that we can come to Him and ask Him to meet our needs. Prayer is much more than just asking for our needs. God desires that we pray His will be done.  For a period of time, God in His sovereignty has allowed man to follow his own course and rebel against His will. For example, God’s perfect will does not include murder. The Bible says that God hates hands that shed innocent blood (Prov. 6:17); however, God has allowed man to act on his own fallen nature and take innocent lives, even those of the unborn. The fact that there is unrighteousness does not mean that the righteous are to stand idly by and accept it.  God wants us to pray that His good and perfect will happens here on earth just as it is in heaven. Again, according to his sovereignty, God answers our prayer.

With being said, we should ask ourselves, “Do our prayer lives include a time where we ask that God’s will is done in our family, communities and country?” “Do we have a time in our prayer that we stand against such things as abortion?” Prayer does matter, and we are to believe that as individuals or corporately we can make a difference to stand against unrighteousness by kneeling in prayer.

Take some time to seek the Lord and see what He places on your heart. Make it part of your prayer life to pray for some area of your family, community or country that is not in line with God’s will.

Maranatha!

Your kingdom come. Matt 6:10

We are spending some time going through what is known as the “The Lord’s Prayer”. Actually a better title would be “The Disciple’s Prayer,”  as this prayer is Jesus’s model for His disciples to pray. The prayer is broken down into six requests. The last three requests are in regards to our needs (i.e. give us this day our daily bread), but the first three are in regards to God, His glory, and His kingdom. Today we will look at the second request: “Your kingdom come.”

A few days ago I heard another pastor explain that one of the reasons Christians struggle today is because pastors have stopped preaching on Heaven. We have made it all about your “ Your Best Life Now.” This is not in line with Biblical doctrine. The Bible teaches that, though the Lord does bless us in this life, the ultimate hope for the Christian lies in what is ahead.  This is such the case that the Apostle Paul wrote “19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” (1 Cor. 15:19) So how does removing the hope of Heaven from our teaching cause Christians to struggle? Christians struggle with this because in this life we face many hardships and even endure persecution for the name of Christ. The motivation the Bible gives those Christ Jesus to press on through these trials is ultimately the return of our King.  If you take future glory out of view, and make everything about the here and now, believers can get discouraged and have trouble pressing on. The Apostle Paul was motivated to “run for the prize” That prize was not a new Mercedes, it was an imperishable crown that he would receive in Heaven (1 Cor. 9:24-27).  If we take away “kingdom come”, we take away the finish line and tell believers to just run for the sake of running.

 

When we pray “Your kingdom come”, we are praying come Lord Jesus come!   When we pray this, we set our minds attention and our hearts affection on the return of Jesus. As Christians, we are supposed to be in anticipation of Christ’s return. It is interesting to think that so much of our prayers solely focus on issues that will be irrelevant when Jesus comes back. 

As Christians we should turn our thoughts back to the hope and anticipation of Jesus’s return. Starting your prayer time by praying “Lord Jesus come back and reign! or “Lord Jesus return for your bride!“  is a good way to direct your  heart and focus on His return. Again, this is the focus of the Book. If you don’t believe me turn to the last page where the King says“20 “‘Surely I am coming quickly.” (Rev. 22) Come Lord Jesus come!

Praying for the Glory of God

Hallowed be Your name Matt 6:9

“Hallowed be Your name” is the first prayer request in what we call The Lord’s Prayer. It is the foundation of the entire prayer. We don’t often use the word “hallowed”. When is the last time you used the word “hallowed” or “hallow” in a sentence? You probably cannot remember. The word hallowed means revered. So when you pray for God’s name to be hallowed, you are praying that, through answering your requests God will be revered or glorified. It is also important to know just what it means to pray that God’s name be glorified. Many times when “name” is used in the Bible it means more than just a proper name; it signifies the character and attributes of the one that is named. In God’s case, His name represents His mercy, faithfulness, grace, power, love, knowledge and so on.  So for us to pray, “Hallowed be Your name… give us this day our daily bread”, we are praying that God would be glorified as the loving provider of our needs.  To pray, “Hallowed be Your name…forgive us our debts” is to pray that God, in answering our prayer, is glorified for His great mercy. 

Starting our prayers by praying that God’s name be glorified should be a hedge against asking amiss. “God glorify Your name by ordaining that I win the lottery!” “God glorify your name by making my enemies suffer.” “God glorify Your name by making the Bulldogs win a championship. It’s been so long!” Good luck with these. A simple guideline for a prayer request is the following: Does it glorify God?

Most people that have followed Christ for a number of years are able to look back, and in hindsight thank God for the prayers He did not answer. At the time, we wanted what we thought was best. We never got it, years went by, and looking back we say “Thank God He did not answer that prayer!” We see that He was wise in not giving us what we wanted. Thus, God is even glorified for His wisdom and mercy in unanswered prayer. 

Begin your prayer time asking God to glorify Himself through answering your prayers. In seeking that above all God be glorified in our prayers, we are also seeking what is best for us. That which glorifies God is ultimately best for us. 

The Goodness of God and Prayer

⁹ In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven, Matt 6

Many people feel that they do not know how to pray. If praying does not come naturally to you, you are in the same boat as the disciples before Jesus taught them to pray. Remember they asked Him “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)? In the “Lord’s Prayer”, Jesus lays down a blueprint to direct our prayer. He instructs us “In this manner, therefore, pray”, giving us a model to follow to direct our requests. If you don’t know how to get somewhere, follow a map. If you don’t know how to pray, follow “The Lord’s Prayer”.

Before Jesus directs our requests, He directs us to whom we should pray. “Our Father in heaven” shows that we are not praying to an aloof, far off god who set the world in motion and has nothing to do with us. We are praying to our Father. The One to whom “we are to cast our cares because He cares.” (1 Peter 5:7).  There is a sense of intimacy there.  People who grow up in a healthy family and can relate to a father figure know that a father is interested in the affairs and welfare of his child. They are not bothered by their children asking to have their needs met.

In Matthew 7, Jesus compares our Heavenly Father to human fathers. Earthly fathers will give children bread when they ask for bread, not a snake. You, whether mother or father, when your child asks you for something will gladly meet your child’s needs and not give them something that will harm them. How much more will a perfect good and loving God meet His children’s needs?  What is at the center of Jesus’s point is that God is good, and God’s goodness is the foundation of our prayers. He gives because He is good, not because we are good.

When we pray “Our Father in heaven” we are not only addressing the God of the universe, but we are also addressing our attentive Father. His nature is to be interested in the needs of His children. We don’t need to compete for His attention.  When we pray “Our Father in heaven” we are praying to an infinitely good God, who can and wills to do nothing but good for His children. When you pray to your Father in heaven, resist the urge to ask based on your own merits, but base your petition on the goodness of God.