...NEED I SAY MORE...

The Lord's Prayer and the Flesh IV

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil-How can we ask God this? Isn't He good? Doesn't The Bible teach that God does not tempt? Well, I've struggled with that and I've come to the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things, since God is in complete control, somehow there must be at least an indirect allowance of evil. Therefore He could keep it away from me if He wanted. God wants me to acknowledge that I cannot even handle temptation without his help.

Romans 8 teaches that we are sheep to be slaughtered but God is constantly working everything out for my good. By daily confessing that I am weak and cannot handle temptation or evil on my own I deny my flesh which tells me that I can handle it. I am then free to depend on God's Spirit to work in me.

35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written, "FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED."
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.