Week 1, day 5: Would God lead us into temptation?
“And lead us not into temptation” (NIV)
“Do not bring us to hard testing” (Good News)
“Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil” (The Message)
Bern Leckie writes:
Would God lead us into temptation? If not, why pray like this?
When I prayed about this, I remembered a few bits from the Bible. In Old Testament times, people didn’t separate “God” things from “natural” things the way we often do and tended to accept God’s involvement with everything. But this didn’t mean that God caused everything to happen in our lives. Job suffered and his friends assumed that God must have been addressing some unconfessed sin in his life, but the story shows us that it’s wise not to make assumptions about what God is or isn’t doing like this.
In New Testament times, people still linked their troubles and temptations with a belief that God must be doing something. But James wrote that, “when tempted, no-one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’” In his view, temptation is never from God. It’s purely a product of our own desire. Having a desire isn’t sinful but, given enough nurturing, an evil or harmful desire “gives birth to sin” which, in turn, “gives birth to death.”
We are all sure that our loving Father God doesn’t muck around with tempting us towards harm and death! Why would he? So we talked about times when we might really want to do the wrong thing, and how we could ask God to protect us from those times.
Is that it, then? Should Jesus simply have been better translated as “protect us” or “lead us away from temptation?” Maybe!
Or maybe it’s good to feel that tension, knowing that I find it harder that I would like to admit to separate good from bad, such as an appreciation for tasty food, and an unhealthy appetite for too much.
I want to get better at being led by God. I also want to see more of God’s involvement with my whole life, not just the bits that fit into the categories of faith and church stuff. So when I do feel tempted, I don’t want to blame God, but I do want to remember that God is close and with me for the whole of my life's journey. He knows how temptation to me is not always stuff to avoid but how I learn to regard it, such as whether I believe it will satisfy me when it won't. God never misdirects, but he is always involved and able to lead me.