Why do some churches begin their celebration of Advent, which is Latin for “arrival” and refers to Christ’s coming, a month before Christmas? Are they taking their cue from Walmart and trying to leverage the holiday to maximize worship attendance?
The church I joined after my conversion did not celebrate Advent and was generally suspicious of any worship traditions that predated the Reformation. Having grown up in a non-religious home, I knew nothing about the Advent Season. Even after I became a pastor, I found the concept confusing.
The muddle began with the first Sunday in Advent, when the church’s historic prayers and its Scripture readings are all about Jesus’s Second Coming. For example, on the first Sunday in Advent this year, the collect – the short, themed prayer for the day’s worship – refers to “the last day, when [Christ] shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead.”
Focusing on Christ’s Second Coming seems an odd way to prepare oneself to celebrate his first. The order is backwards. Would it not make better sense to begin our Christmas preparations by concentrating on Christ’s first coming, with its humble stable and manger, its wise men and shepherds?
But there is wisdom in the liturgical calendar. For one thing, observing the Advent season for nearly a month prior to Christmas helps us become better at an essential skill of the spiritual life: the ability to wait. The reality that we must wait, and trust God as we do, is a theme throughout the Old and New Testaments. Spending a month actively waiting for Christmas is a spiritual strength-builder.
Patience, which is indispensable to the spiritual life, is impossible when a person does not know what he is waiting for. And not just impossible, but absurd – think of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” But in the first week of Advent, the church’s worship reminds her people what they are waiting for.
So, Christians begin their time of waiting with a reminder of what is coming. Hence, the Old Testament reading for the first week of Advent speaks of a time when people will “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” No more war, no need of enormous defense budgets, no threat of nuclear holocaust, but rather peace. That is worth waiting for.
During Advent, worshipers are not only reminded of what they are waiting for, but also of who they are waiting for. In the Gospel reading for the first week of Advent, Christians are reminded that it is their own Lord Jesus whose coming and reign will launch a new era of peace and joy.
When the first coming of Jesus is removed from its place in the larger biblical narrative, what is left is a melodrama about a pregnant teen, the rejection she and her young husband experienced, and the challenging circumstances that surrounded the birth of her special baby. This story has often been told in a way that is not just sweet but sappy and misses the point entirely.
Something similar happens when the story of Christ’s death is removed from its place in the larger biblical narrative. In both cases, God ceases to be the protagonist of the story, the purpose he pursues is forgotten, and the point of the story is reduced to a moral – helpful advice for readers and listeners to follow.
When we return the story of Jesus’s birth to its place in God’s plan and purpose for creation, which Advent Season can help us do, it is filled with hope. The profound importance of Jesus’s birth to God’s purpose for humanity becomes apparent. Instead of a morality tale, we have a rescue account – and a promise that creation will be set right.
Advent observance can keep us from losing the glory and promise of Christmas in the rush of the season and the banality of retail sales. It can reintroduce the wonder of the holiday and renew our hope in the God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
On Sunday, November 13th, our church commemorated IDOP Sunday with special guests Otoniel Martinez and our long-time friend Joe Milioni. What they have to share will excite you and encourage your faith. Remarkable advances are even now happening in the world through the gospel.
Thanksgiving is not a given. I do not mean that the national holiday is in peril. It is safe enough for now, although its rootedness in the theistic tradition could make it a strategic target in future culture wars. But as an actual occasion for giving thanks, it is already in a precarious position. The theistic worldview on which the practice of thanksgiving rests is eroding beneath it.
Of course, it is possible to express thanksgiving whether a theistic worldview is in place or not. Anyone can express gratitude to the important people in their life: a father or mother, family members, friends, and coworkers. It is possible, but it can hardly be assumed.
Gratitude, which is not an action but an attitude or a prevailing spirit, is the necessary foundation upon which the act of thanksgiving operates. Without the spiritual virtue of gratitude, thanksgiving will either be absent, manipulative, or hollow. The absence of gratitude in relationships, like the absence of some important nutrient in the body, is unhealthy.
It is not just unhealthy for the relationship, but unhealthy for the individual. Writing in Psychology Today, Amy Morin cites various studies suggesting that grateful people are physically healthier. They are happier. Their gratitude provides a bulwark against depression, restrains relation-fracturing aggression, and encourages greater sympathy. Grateful people even sleep better.
I have found gratitude to be, both in myself and in others, an accurate barometer of spiritual health. The ingrate not only knows less of life’s pleasures, but also knows less of God’s grace. Gratitude may be the single most important measure of spiritual vitality.
But just knowing that one should be grateful does not make a person so. Even a genuine desire to become grateful will not produce gratitude, any more than the desire to be thin will take away one’s appetite. If the 18th century English divine William Law was right and “the greatest saint in the world … is he who is always thankful to God,” then becoming a consistently grateful person is of enormous value. But how does that happen?
There are steps that can be taken. People can regularly recount their blessings to God and intentionally practice expressing gratitude toward others. These go together, for many of God’s blessings come through people. It is quite impossible that one should be genuinely grateful to God and unappreciative toward people at the same time.
The formation of a grateful spirit, and the habits of thanksgiving it produces, will turn out to be difficult without a foundational belief system to support it. What are some of the components of the grateful person’s belief system?
St. Paul outlines these essential beliefs in his letter to the Romans. The first is the conviction that God is at work and is bringing good to his people in everything that happens. Believing this, a person can be grateful even if she loses her job or house or is diagnosed with cancer. Without this belief, she may endure; willpower may keep her moving forward, but it will not make her a grateful person.
To be truly grateful, even in hard times, people must align themselves with God’s goal for humanity. This, according to the apostle, is nothing less than conformation “to the image of God’s Son” Jesus. For those who adopt this as their goal, everything that happens, both good and bad, can help them achieve their objective. If, however, their goal is to be wealthy, or healthy, or to avoid hassles, gratitude will always be elusive.
To become a grateful person, one must also believe in a God who loves unconditionally. Life will sometimes scream that we are unwanted, unloved, and unworthy. Our own failures will echo that scream. Gratitude can only be reclaimed in such moments if we are convinced that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Thanksgiving is the fruit that grows on the tree of gratitude, which is planted in the soil of belief in the powerful, loving God Jesus knew. It is the sweetest and most nourishing fruit we can bring to the holidays.
There are Christians who go about their lives the way they think best yet sprinkle a teaspoon of religion on top (mostly on Sundays) to add a little God-flavoring. Then there are the people who do whatever they do (3:17) in the name of Jesus. For the first type of Christian, prayer is a religious exercise, which they know they should engage in more often but never seem to find the time.
For the second kind of person, prayer is more than a religious exercise; it is a personal necessity. They cannot live without it. You cannot do whatever you do in the name of Jesus unless you pray frequently. You will pray when you are at work, at the store, in line at the coffee shop, going to sleep, and engaging in a disagreement. This is what Paul had in mind when he wrote, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Some people, hearing this, might assume that carving out a time devoted to prayer is unnecessary, as long as they pray like this throughout the day. That is a mistake. Taking time from other things to pray is not a just a matter of preference: Jesus instructed us to go into the inner room, close the door, and pray.
But Paul is not talking about inner room prayers here. He wants Christians to take their praying on the road. As they go about their day, doing their normal things, he wants them to stay alert to God’s voice and be ready to interact with him at any moment. Prayer is not just something we do when we have something to pray about. It is something we do when God has something for us to pray about. That insight in transformative.
When God wants to get something done, he taps a person who is poised to pray. Prayer is the foundational way we work together with God.
Paul tells the Colossians, “Devote yourselves to prayer.” A literal reading might go like this: “As regards prayer, stay ready.” The Greek word is the same one Mark used when he said of Jesus, “He told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him.” Here, we are the ones to be ready for him – ready for prayer.
We find the same word in Acts 10, where the Roman centurion Cornelius kept a trusted soldier – we would call him a military attaché – at the ready in case he was needed. In Romans 13, Paul uses this same word of government officials who “give their full time to governing,” as the NIV puts it. It could be translated, “who are always on call.”
God wants his people alwayson-call for prayer, so that they can engage with him whenever and wherever they are: at work, home, restaurant, doctor’s office. God is already in those places, and he is already at work, and he wants us to join him in what he is doing. That only happens when we are on call and ready to pray.
That sounds doable, but unless we are intentional about it, things will get in the way. Our own insecurities can stop us. Distractions – and ours is the age of distraction – will keep us from praying. Our own goals, often chosen out of a need to feel good about ourselves, will thwart us. We will ignore the pager. We will not be on call for pray unless we have chosen to be and are careful, intentional, and determined to stay that way.
God offers us the opportunity to join the adventure, to live and work with him in the world—and prayer is a key component in that adventure. And so, we go through our days with our eyes open, ready to pray at the drop of a pin – or rather, at the whisper of the Spirit. Out of those prayers will come action. Prayer is not a substitute for action but a catalyst for it. People who pray like this start seeing what God has for them to do.
But it is not just action that comes out of prayer. Answers do too – sometimes remarkable answers that strengthen our trust in God and help others trust him too. People who have lived this way for many years often have astonishing testimonies of answered prayer.
Devoted to prayer … but what do we pray about? We pray about everything, as Paul told the Philippians. But there are some types of prayer in which we will be engaged again and again. For example: We pray for open doors to share Christ with others. This is verse 3: “. . . pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ.”
Here, as in many other places (Romans 15:30–32; 2 Corinthians 1:11; Ephesians 6:19; Philippians 1:19; and 1 Thessalonians. 5:25[1]), Paul connects prayer with evangelism. If we want to talk to someone about Christ, or invite them to church, or explain the gospel to them, it’s important that we talk to God before (and even while) we talk to them. Don’t underestimate the power of prayer!
The famous missionary James Fraser went to southwest China, in the mountainous regions bordering Burma, with the gospel. One year James had seen many people come to Christ in the mountain villages, but winter came before they could be discipled, and the roads became impassible. James was worried that these new converts would revert to their old ways. He was continually frustrated by the weather, and he even found himself blaming God.
But he kept himself on call for prayer, and he sensed God challenging him to spend the three to five days it would normally take to travel to the villages, lead services, and travel home, to pray for the new Christians there.
When spring arrived and the snow melted, he could hardly wait to reach the mountain villages and check on the converts. He was afraid they had fallen back into spiritism and idolatry. They had not. Through the winter they had been reading their Bibles and praying. In fact, they had grown far more in their faith than the converts in the lowlands whom James regularly taught. Don’t underestimate the power of prayer.
We pray for open doors. We also ask God to help us make the good news about him clear when we go through those doors. Verse 4: “Pray that I may proclaim it clearly” – or make it apparent – “as I should.” When we pray like this, God answers. Ideas come to us for explaining the good news of Christ to people. Even as we converse with someone, God will give us an idea or an image that the other person can relate to – sometimes an idea or image we have never thought about before. He is answering our prayer and doing it on the spot.
A helpful skill to develop is the ability to give our attention to a person while keeping our spiritual ears open to what God might say. It’s not that we’re thinking about what we will say next. We are listening to the person before us and for the God above us, should he want to join the conversation.
We don’t just pray about what to say, but also about how to act. The actual words we use are only a part – sometimes a small part – of our interactions. And so, verse 5, we pray to “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; [to] make the most of every opportunity.” God, who gives us ideas about what to say, will also give us ideas about how to act.
A Christian went to visit a friend who had been in the hospital for many weeks. She thought God wanted her to do this, but she didn’t know what to say. They made small talk for a while and then she felt like God wanted her to place her hands on her friend and pray for her. That was way out there for her, but she asked her friend, and she said it would be alright. It was more than alright; it was just right. After she left, her friend, alone in her hospital room, prayed to receive Christ. Who knew that doing that would touch her so deeply? God did.
What we say is important, but so is what we do. Students sat in a missionary language school waiting for their very first class to begin. Their teacher entered the room and, without saying a word, walked down every row of students and then left. Moments later, she returned and asked, “Did you notice anything special about me?”
Everyone was quiet. Finally, one woman raised her hand and said: “I noticed that you had on nice perfume.” The class chuckled, but the teacher said, “That’s exactly what I wanted you to notice.” Then she said: [It] “will be a long time before any of you will be able to speak Chinese well enough to share the gospel with anyone in China. But even before you are able to do that, you can minister the sweet fragrance of Christ to these people by the quality of your lives.”[2]
But just as words are not a substitute for action, actions are not a substitute for words. What we say is important, and not just what we say about Jesus. In verse 6, Paul writes: “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Conversations that are “full of grace” (generous and kind), and “seasoned with salt” (interesting, not bland) make the way of Christ appealing. You may think, “But I’m not a good conversationalist.” God can make you a better one—as you pray and listen to him.
(Let me pause to clarify something: While praying Christians have power with God, they do not have power over God. It is important to understand that our prayers won’t make God act. But it’s even more important to understand that they don’t need to; he is already in action. We keep our eyes open so that we can see what he is up to and join him.
A teacher once told his disciples that experiences with God cannot be planned or manipulated. “They are spontaneous moments of grace,” he said, “almost accidental.”
One of his students asked, “If that is so, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual exercises?”
The teacher answered, “To be as accident-prone as possible.”2That is why we dedicate blocks of time to prayer: to make us accident prone to those “spontaneous moments of grace.”
Imagine a local club has a great house band. Monday nights are Jam Nights, when the band picks people from the audience to join them on stage. So, patrons bring their instruments in the hope that they might be chosen to join the band for a set. One night, the singer points to you, sitting there with your Stratocaster, and calls you up in the middle of a set. You plug in and begin to play. But your guitar is out of tune, and it messes everything up. You’re not going to get called back on stage for a long time.
I said earlier that some people think that blocks of time dedicated to prayer are unnecessary as long as they pray throughout the day. But those spontaneous, Spirit-led, on the stage prayers require those regular times of prayer. That’s when we tune our instrument to the voice of God. It is the people who go into the inner room, close the door, and pray that are on call for prayer. The Band Leader knows their instrument will be tuned and they’ll be ready when he calls on them.)
Back to our text: Paul calls us to be watchful, but what are we watching for? The main thing for which Christians always watch is Christ’s return. We keep one eye on the sky. More than half of the 22 times that Jesus or a New Testament writer instructs us “to watch” (stay alert), we are told to watch for Christ’s return.
We are also told to watch for danger, particularly threats to our (or others’) relationship with God. Those threats come from various sources – Scripture mentions temptation, error, and hypocrisy among them. We are also awake and watching for opportunities to serve Christ among the people with whom our lives intersect. A good question as we watch might be, “What are you doing in this person’s life, Lord Jesus, and do you have a part for me to play in it?” That’s a prayer we can take on the road.
Paul wants our watchfulness in prayer to be accompanied by thanksgiving. For what are we thankful? For answers to prayer. We don’t just watch for needs about which we can pray, but for answers to prayers we have already prayed. We must be careful about “moving on” to the next thing without stopping to thank God for what he did in the last thing. Failure in this will lead to a loss of confidence in God and a weakening of our faith.
We watch for what God has done and we watch for what God is doing. Paul wants the Colossians to pray together with (and for) him and his friends, that God would open to them a door to speak about Christ.
Notice that Paul does not say, “Pray with, and for, us so that I will get out of jail soon,” or that “We will have a safe journey,” or that “Trophimus’s health might improve.” What was on Paul’s mind – and should also be on ours – was that God would open doors so that he could talk to people about Jesus and his kingdom. When God opens a door, no one can close it. We should follow Paul example and request and pray for God to open such doors. Then we must watch. That’s how we join the adventure.
Opportunities to talk about Christ or demonstrate his kind of life happen regularly – but we may not notice. God unlocks a door, and we walk right past it. Most of the door are not the automatic kind; we actually need to try the doorknob.
The pastor and writer Lee Eclov thinks that the biggest hindrance for a lot of us in sharing Christ is not that we don’t know how, but that we don’t see a way into the conversation. Because he’s “rarely had a natural chance to speak of the gospel,” he has learned to pray for open doors. Praying for open doors takes more time but is also more effective.
For example, Lee struck up a conversation with a young man at Einstein’s Bagels. He’d see the guy in there often, always wearing black pants and a white shirt and carrying a backpack full of books. One day he broke the ice: “I see you like to read,” and found that he was eager to talk. He learned his name and that he was a server at a nearby restaurant. The second time they talked, the guy asked Lee if it would be okay if he and his girlfriend visited his church. They were there the next Sunday and backpack guy has since become a Christ-follower.
Instead of trying to force things, Lee started praying and watching. Then he tried the door handle by saying: “I see you like to read.” And the door swung open.[3] That is so different from the attitude that it’s up to me to make things happen.
How do we apply? Three things. One: Realize that God is already working in the lives of the people you meet. Your job is not to start something but to join someone – God – in what he is doing.
Two: Set a time to pray daily. Incorporate Scripture into that time so that you can listen to God, then talk to him about what you have seen. This is the primary way we learn to recognize his voice when he speaks to us during the day.
Three: Join the adventure. Say to God: What are you doing in this person’s life, and do you have a part for me to play? If you think he does, go for it, and be amazed as God works through you.
[1] O’Brien, P. T. (1994). Colossians. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 1275). Inter-Varsity Press.
[2] Michael Green, (Alice Grey, ed.) Stories for a Faithful Heart (Alice Grey, ed. Multnomah, 2004), p. 95
Rod Dreher believes that “A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming” upon Christians living in the U.S. Dreher, who is a senior editor of The American Conservative and the author of The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, claims that “A progressive – and profoundly anti-Christian militancy – is steadily overtaking society.”
Dreher identifies the persecutors as the liberal elite. They are the “social justice warriors,” and the “woke” crowd. They despise traditional Christian morality as hateful and bigoted.
Some traditional Christians think that Dreher has overplayed his hand, and I agree. His comparisons between Soviet era repression and “woke” culture activism have generated fear and hostility toward the very people Christians are to win for Christ. Persecution complexes are hardly conducive to evangelism.
The absence of cultural and political power does not equal persecution. It may, however, prepare the way for it. Once people have been villainized, as traditional Christians have been over their beliefs about sexual morality, it becomes easier to treat them unjustly. Today, if someone says that gay marriage is outside God’s will – even though President Obama said something like this in 2008 – they qualify as a hatemonger.
This cultural powerlessness-demonization-injustice sequence is old and familiar. In the middle of the first century, St. Paul came to Ephesus (a thriving port city along what is now Turkey’s central coast) and had considerable success in evangelizing people and instructing them in the way of Christ. But, as anyone familiar with the New Testament Book of Acts might expect, there was a backlash.
To make sense of what happened, some background is helpful. Ephesus was a principal center of Artemis worship in the eastern Mediterranean. A magnificent temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, had been built for the goddess where, as legend had it, her image had fallen from the sky. The temple was one of the Mediterranean’s great tourist attractions.
It was also one of the Mediteraanean’s great money-making enterprises. The production of miniature shrines to Artemis was a booming business. People who purchased a shrine were assured that they could worship the goddess in their own country just as truly as they did in her great temple.
The local economy, and the lifestyle it made possible, depended on the tourism that Artemis worship generated. So, when Paul came on the scene, saying things like, “we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill,” he was viewed as a threat.
The text of Acts is instructive here. An influencer named Demetrius called a meeting of local craftsmen and “workers in related fields.” Some of these were probably competitors, but you would never know this from Demetrius’ skillful oratory. He addresses them as comrades who face a common threat. With his use of first person plurals, he sets up an us-against-them scenario.
He then deftly conveys the idea that the Christians pose a threat to their economic security. His, “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business,” is a subtle reminder of what his hearers stand to lose.
He applies pressure by stating – perhaps, overstating – Paul’s success. He has “convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia.” He warns of the “danger that … our trade will lose its good name.”
He rounds off his argument with a religious note: “The great goddess Artemis will be discredited … robbed of her divine majesty.” With worries about economic security in place, and religious devotion as justification, Demetrius incites a riot that imperils Christians and turns Ephesus upside down.
Could something similar happen here? Possibly. The way has been paved. What ought Christians do? They ought to pull together across denominational lines, love and support each other, and bear testimony to God’s love before the people who oppose them.
But they must not adopt their opponent’s tactics. Demonizing enemies and stirring up hostility is not the way of Jesus. St. Paul taught Christians, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Evil can be overcome in no other way.
This class is about how Christians can obey Jesus and stop judging. Instead of placing themselves above of others, they can take a position of humility and ask. Asking is the rule of the kingdom.
Understanding why you are tempted can help you overcome chronic, difficult temptations. The reason behind temptation may not be something you’ve ever thought about. This message helps us understand why we are tempted and what it means for us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Approx. 27 minutes. (Text below.)
Andrew Wilson was on a commercial flight into Queenstown when his plane shuddered and dropped 50 feet almost instantly, then did it again and, I’m not sure, possibly a third time. The cabin filled with screams and prayers to God – a God in whom many of the passengers did not believe.
Andrew was fascinated by those prayers. He said the most common petitions were of the “Deliver us from evil” variety. “Help!” “Save us!” and “Oh, God, please don’t let me die!”
The other kind he heard, though less frequently, was of the “Forgive us our sins” variety. “I’m sorry” and “God, forgive me.” So, apparently after crying out for rescue, people prepared to meet their Maker.
It occurred to Andrew that when people are not in a crisis, they usually stick to the “daily bread” variety of requests: “God, please give me this job.” “Fix my marriage.” “Keep my children safe.” “Provide for my family.” So, people pray for deliverance first, then forgiveness, and then physical provision. In other words, “we pray the Lord’s Prayer backwards … we say help, then sorry, then please do X for me, and then please do Y for others.”
There is nothing wrong with any of these prayers, but we won’t pray them well when we pray them backwards. There is a reason the prayer starts with, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Only when we get that right, will we get the other requests right.[1]
Today we have arrived at the final request of the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
When you are led into temptation, you are in a tight spot. Why anyone would choose to live there (and many do), I don’t know. It is a place of constant pressure. There is no room to move. But God can rescue us. He can deliver us into a large place where there is room to breathe, relax, and be restored. That is what God did for the psalmist: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” (Psalm 18:19).
That large place is the presence of God. With him, we have room to breathe. In his presence, temptation does not bother us. This is why we must learn, as David did, “to set the Lord always before me.” It is because he is right here – at my right hand – and not because of my own strength or piety, that temptation will not move me. When we are not in God’s presence, temptation will sweep our feet out from under us, cause us to fall, and we’ll hurt ourselves and others.
Let’s say a man falls into temptation: He lusts. Then he falls even further and commits adultery. He hurts himself terribly. It changes him, makes him a different, and weaker, man. But his fall not only injures him; it also injures his spouse – even if she never finds out about it. There will be a change in his relationship with her – to think otherwise is a diabolical deceit. And if she finds out, her trust will be broken, their children will be wounded. Their respect for their father – so important to their wholeness in this world and their life in Christ – will be devastated. Not only does he hurt himself and his family; he also hurts the woman with whom he is involved (and she hurts him).
God did not tell us to do some things and avoid others on a whim. His directions to us are not random. They are based on our design and are for our – and everyone’s – good. You might not believe that; I understand. You might rather think that what you do is nobody’s business but your own. If you want to drink to excess or watch porn all night or enter the hookup culture or get rid of the baby whose birth might result, it doesn’t affect anyone else!
But that is nonsense. Our lives are inextricably intertwined. We cannot violate God’s will and ways without hurting people – and deep down, we know it.
So, Jesus tells us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Now, why would we need to pray that? Would God “lead us into temptation”? Not according to James, who wrote : “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” (James 1:13). But if God does not tempt us, why would Jesus instruct us to pray this?
The confusion here is largely linguistic and comes from two sources. The first is the unfamiliar syntax of the phase, “Lead us not…” The Greek scholar A. T. Robertson calls it a “permissive imperative” and says that the idea is, “Do not let us be led into temptation.” “Lead us not…” means, “Do not let us be led.” We will be so led apart from God’s providential and timely intervention.
The second thing that makes this confusing is the word translated, “temptation.” The primary idea of the Greek word is a test or trial. When we read, “temptation,” we immediately think of an enticement to do something we know is wrong. But reading the word “test” does not evoke that at all. This one word carries both meanings and, though they intersect (as we will see momentarily), it is important to understand that God never entices us to do evil. He is not out to entrap us in some sin and then punish us for it. That is completely contrary to his character.
Jesus knows that trials are going to come; they “must come,” he says (Matthew 18:7). Aware of that, he instructs us to say to God, “Don’t let us be led into the trial.” I expect that God has answered that prayer on thousands of occasions just for the people in this room. Through his provident grace, we have escaped trials for which we were unprepared, trials that may have undone us. We’ve all faced trials, some extraordinarily difficult, but we’ve all escaped trials too – not because of our ingenuity but because of God’s goodness.
This is the sixth request in the Lord’s prayer. The first was, “Hallowed be thy name,” which recognizes God’s greatness. The last is, “Lead us not into temptation,” which recognizes our weakness. This request is made by people who “do not think more highly of themselves than they ought” (Romans 12:3). People who do “think more highly of themselves than they ought” don’t bother praying this prayer.
The Apostles James and John, the Sons of Thunder, seem to have thought more highly of themselves than they ought. They came to Jesus requesting the top two positions in his coming kingdom. When he asked if they were capable of going through the trials that would come – essentially, “Do you think you’ve got what it takes?” – they answered, “Absolutely!”
Their “Bring it on!” attitude was nothing but chutzpah. When the trial came, they (like everyone else) deserted Jesus – just as he said they would. They needed more confidence in Jesus and, until they had that, less confidence in themselves.
C. S. Lewis told us that “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.
“This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all,” – and he said this in the middle of the Second World War – “you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.
“That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of … evil – until we try to fight it.”[2]
When it comes to standing against temptation, don’t give yourself more credit than you’re due. Dallas Willard was right: “The excessive confidence people have in their own faith—usually it is when they are not suffering, of course—simply makes the danger worse.”
I have a friend who was always saying, “I trust my faith.” But that was a mistake. Trust your faith, and your faith will let you down. Trust your God, and he will never let you down.
So, God does not tempt his children to do evil. In fact, he often protects them from trials that would otherwise defeat them – more often than any of us know. But when a trial will serve them, when it will make them more than they could otherwise be for all eternity, he will allow it. Jesus is not telling us to pray: “Don’t ever let me be tried. Don’t let me feel bad or afraid or guilty. I am satisfied to stay the way I am for all eternity.” Instead, we ask to be spared the trial that might undo us, especially the final trial that will occur at the judgment of the wicked.
Please understand that praying, “Lead us not into temptation,” is not just asking for escape from pain, and failure, and shame, though it certainly includes that. Not everything that tries us is unwanted. Money, for example, has put many a man and woman to the test, which is something Jesus made abundantly clear.[3] To pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” can also be a request to escape the success that would steal our hearts from God, the reputation that would make us proud, and the ease that would make us shallow. In other words, when we make this request, we may be asking God to keep us from the very things the rest of the world wants most! Do we really want to pray the Lord’s Prayer?
Every trial – whether the trial of a terminal illness or the trial of a promotion at work, the trial of poverty or the trial of wealth – can become a prompt to trust God or an enticement to turn away from him. This becomes clear when we understand the real point of temptation (and most of us do not).
We assume the devil gets off on making people do bad things – get drunk, have elicit sex, lie, steal, lust. But the devil doesn’t care about those things – they are just a means to an end – nor does he care about us. Understanding this is hugely helpful.
So, ask yourself: to what end does the devil tempt you? If you have sex with someone who is not your spouse, or go through the agony of getting caught, is he satisfied? No. Those things are just a means to an end.
That end, according to James 1:13 is to “drag you away” by powerful, personal desires or, “lure you away” by high and noble ones—the operative word being “away.” Away from what? Ask rather: “Away from whom?” The whole purpose of the temptation is to get you away from God who bought you for himself at great price.
The bait – sex, success, reputation, etc. – means little to our enemy. He changes baits more often than a tournament bass fisherman. He cares nothing about whether you commit adultery, or win the lottery, puff your chest out in self-righteousness, or beat your kid. It’s all the same to him as long as you move away from God. And if you have moved away from God, you are right where he wants you.
In the end, you – though he is happy to destroy you – are nothing to the devil but a means to an end. The devil’s principal target in every temptation, the person he longs to hurt – understand this – is God. Temptations are scams, we are the dupes, but God is the target the devil wants to defraud. When we give into temptation, we that is what is really happening.
I said that the baits mean little to the evil one, but that does not mean they’re not effective or even sophisticated. The tempter is so good at what he does that you may find yourself trying to get up even before you realize you’ve fallen down. Satan does not send out a notice letting you know that you’ve been chosen for his latest scam.
In his book, Tempted and Tried, Russell More refers to the work of Temple Grandin, the extraordinary scientist and animal behaviorist. Years ago, Grandin, who is a strong proponent of the humane treatment of livestock, developed a painless process for cows to be slaughtered.
Workers, Grandin said, should never yell at the cows, and they should never use cattle prods, which she said are completely unnecessary and even counterproductive. If the cows are simply kept contented and comfortable, they’ll go wherever they’re led. Grandin argued that the cows should never be surprised, and nothing should be done to unnerve them. They should not be hurt in any way … until their throats are cut.
Grandin designed a curving path for stockyards. It was so gentle that the cows “don’t even notice when their hooves are no longer touching the ground. A conveyor belt slightly lifts them gently upward, and then” … a blunt instrument strikes them right between the eyes, rendering them unconscious. They go from being livestock to being T-Bones and sirloins, and “are never aware enough to be alarmed by any of it.” Dr. Grandin labeled her invention, “the stairway to heaven.”
This is Russell More’s commentary: “Forces are afoot right now, negotiating how to get you fat enough for consumption and how to get you calmly and without struggle to the cosmic slaughterhouse floor. The easiest life for you will be one in which you don’t question these things, a life in which you simply do what seems natural …. You might feel as though your life situation is like progressing up a stairway so perfect it’s as though it was designed just for you. And it is. In many ways the more tranquil you feel, the more endangered you are.”[4]
We are not smart enough to see the temptation coming that will strike us right between the eyes. So, let us pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” Now, look at the second part of this request: “But deliver us from evil” or, “the evil one.” The noun could be neuter (in which case it would be “evil”) or masculine (in which case it would be “the evil one”). We cannot be certain as to which Jesus intended—and we don’t need to be. Where the evil one is, there is evil; where there is evil, there is the evil one.
To be delivered is to be rescued, to be saved. Rescued from being a dupe, a tool of evil. Rescued from the consequences of sin (there are consequences), and, most importantly, from being separated from God. To be separated from God is to be separated from your only source of life and your only hope of joy. It is to be separated from meaningfulness and delivered to futility. It is to be cut off from your advocate on the Day of Judgment. No wonder we pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
But it is hypocritical to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” when we are unwilling to be led in the other direction. In Bible college I knew a guy who, when a pretty girl walked by, would say: “Get thee behind me, Satan … You’re blocking my view.” Some people pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” with that same attitude.
A study from a few years ago tracked the top temptations Americans admit they face. (Interestingly, they admit what doesn’t shame them but are quiet about what does.) People surveyed said they struggled either “often” or “sometimes” with: worry or anxiety—60 percent; procrastination—60 percent; eating too much—55 percent; spending too much time on media—44 percent; being lazy—41 percent; spending more money than they could afford—35 percent; gossiping about others—26 percent; being jealous—24 percent; viewing pornography—18 percent; abusing alcohol or drugs—11 percent.
When those same people were asked if they had tried to avoid giving in to temptation, six out of 10 said no. [5] Jesus wants us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” not “Help me not to sin when I’m already there.” We will never succeed if we just want to avoid sin; we must also want to avoid temptation. To do so is a major step forward in the Christian life.
If it is a step you are choosing to take, I invite you to pray this great prayer with me now:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the glory, and the power forever. Amen.
[1] Andrew Wilson, “Backwards Prayers,” CT magazine (Jan/Feb, 2016), p. 30.
[2] Source: C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 11; Cited in Sermonnotes.com.
Thirty years ago, Bill Clinton stated that “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” The issue of its legality is still up in the air, but abortion has never been safe – especially for the developing fetus – and no one in our day can call it rare.
The Guttmacher Institute reported that in 2020 the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion jumped to almost one in five. So, when Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, who belongs to Mr. Clinton’s party, intones, “We must, we absolutely must, protect the right to safe, legal abortion,” it’s worth noting that the word “rare” has been dropped from the mantra.
Many of us think that abortion should be rare. In the few cases where the mother’s life can only be saved by aborting the fetus – a situation former Attorney General C. Everett Koop stated he had never seen – then, yes, save the mother’s life by all means. But how to fulfill Bill Clinton’s vision of making abortion rare is complicated.
One way, of course, is to outlaw it. The year before the Roe v. Wade ruling, the abortion rate was 23 percent lower than the year after. But cutting abortions by a quarter will not make it rare. Using current CDC estimates, that would still mean nearly 700,000 abortions annually in the U.S. So, while I support laws to protect the human being in utero, it is clear that more will need to be done – much more.
To understand why this is so, we must learn to see abortion as one thread in a dense fabric that is woven from attitudes and beliefs regarding the nature of the good life. People like Representative Bonamici think that abortion must be safe, legal, and readily available not because they are bad people, as abortion opponents sometimes claim, but because of what they believe—their worldview.
One of the threads that make up the dense fabric of beliefs into which abortion is woven is people’s understanding of sex – it’s place and purpose in human life. Society’s views of sex have varied in different eras, from Chaucer’s late medieval bawdy to Victorian prudishness to the sexual freedom movement of the late 20th century.
Some people view sex as a personal right (think of the women’s liberation movement of the sixties and seventies). Others see it as an amusement or a stress-relieving diversion (today’s hook-up culture). But there are also those who regard sex as God’s good and purposeful gift to humanity for expressing love and commitment, experiencing pleasure, affirmation, and acceptance, and generating new human life within a stable environment of love.
Those who hold this latter view, which is the Christian view (too) briefly stated, will think that abortion should be exceedingly rare. Those who hold the former views will not. Which view we hold will depend on our personal/spiritual formation. Everyone is formed through a learning relationship with teachers. Whether their teacher is Jesus or popular culture will make a tremendous difference.
Another thread in that worldview fabric is a person’s view of what constitutes success. If success is what our culture pictures it to be – a fine house, new car, plenty of time off, social influence, and endless options to pursue – bringing children into the world will at best be deemed an inconvenience and at worst a disaster. Those who buy into society’s version of success will consider abortion a necessary evil. Once again, this is the result of how we are formed.
Yet another thread in the fabric that holds abortion in place is the belief that reputation trumps behavior. Young professionals fear the mockery of their friends. Teenagers think it better to abort their child than abort their reputation—or the reputation of their parents. One’s regard for reputation is also the product of spiritual formation.
Passing laws to protect human beings still in utero is wise and humane, but we who consider abortion inhumane must not limit our efforts to the ballot box, which will not by itself make abortions rare. For that to happen, there must be a revolutionary change of mind and heart, which can only happen through investment in others, particularly investment in their spiritual formation.
Today, we’re looking at Jesus instructions that we should not judge/condemn other people. We’ll look at why we are so prone to disobeying Jesus in this regard and we’ll see what it was that he had in mind – it may not be what you think!
The Way Home 