Praying for Protection from Temptation

Introduction

What is the purpose of prayer? And how does it relate to daily life and my spiritual growth? Last week we finished Ephesians chapter six at verse 18, there are a few more verses, but we finished our series on spiritual warfare, how to survive, as we’ve looked at the enemy of our soul, who we really fight against, where the battle really lies. And as we closed out last week, we looked at prayer and the importance of prayer to putting on every piece of the armor of God. That prayer is how we put it on. And today I wanted to talk about some specific prayers, specifically praying for protection from the evil one, praying for protection from temptation. And the prayer that was narrated for us just a little bit ago was modeled by the Lord for his disciples actually touches all the most important areas needed to deepen our connection with God and for us to know and to sense his presence.

And so let’s look at Matthew chapter six, verse nine through 13. And today we will specifically be focusing on verse 13 of that chapter. Matthew chapter six, verse nine through 13. And we read again, pray then in this way, our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. And then notice how Jesus closes this model prayer for us. And do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen.

Have you ever felt trapped by your own shortcomings? Or overwhelmed by the power of evils influencing the world and even upon your own personal life? Do you long for victory, for deliverance from temptation, from the struggles that temptation brings?

You know, this prayer that Jesus gives ends with the acknowledgement of the daily temptations that God’s people face. And there’s a request for his guidance and his deliverance out of these temptations. Isn’t it very true that in our fallen world, evil is prevalent and it’s a present reality and temptation is something we’re going to face every single day of our lives as a Christian? Unseen satanic forces and worldly influences are at work around us. And then on top of that, I have my own desires that are continuously at work in me to lead me astray. I desire to please God, but there’s something else within me. As Paul says in Romans seven, I desire to do good, but I don’t find the power to do good. I desire not to do evil, but it seems like so often I get stuck doing the very things that I hate.

Our hearts have an inherent tendency towards self-centeredness, don’t they? Towards serving our own desires and our own ambitions. Sin disrupts our relationship with God. It gets in the way of us and God and with others, and it ends up leaving us empty and searching for meaning in all the wrong places. Searching for satisfaction. In the famous words of the Rolling Stones, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Sin promises big things, but it always leaves us empty. And it distorts our identity. It distorts how we see ourselves by causing us to seek ultimate value and worth in things other than God which leads to instability in how we see ourselves. It leads to addictions, and it leads to a persistent sense of emptiness. And it even leads to the pursuit of lots of other things to fill that void. Sins deceitful, isn’t it?

And through deceit and distraction, sin enslaves us to God-defying, self-gratifying behaviors that overthrow our love for God. Sin often presents itself as an attractive option. No, doesn’t it? It often appears very attractive, and it corrupts our conscience so that we lose the sense of our guiltiness, and we begin to cherish it as if it were a friend, not as if it were our enemy. Friends, if you feel that, then you’re beginning to acknowledge the awful state of the condition of every human being. And so Jesus gives his disciple this prayer, this model prayer, it touches on all the important parts.

I don’t believe Jesus’ point was that, pray this big powerful prayer, and just the words coming out of your mouth, it worked like a magical incantation that makes things happen. No, it’s a model of things that we should touch upon within our prayer. I mean, it begins by saying, our Father who art in heaven, and I’m gonna quote King James, because that’s probably how most of us memorized it. Our Father who is in heaven, art in heaven, we acknowledge our heavenly Father, anyone in this church, our Father who is in heaven, I’m praying, I need to know who I am addressing, that God is indeed my Father. But before you can pray to him like that, he needs to be your Father and you need to know that. How it be thy name? I am asking God, help me to honor you as holy. May your kingdom come, your will be done. God, I’m seeking your kingdom to be established here on earth, not just my agenda. You know better and you should be glorified and your will should be done.

And then we get to, give us this day our daily bread. Please meet my daily needs. I usually find when I come to this point in my prayer, I say, actually stop me from eating bread, please, because I have enough. There’s a place to pray for our needs, isn’t there? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts. Forgive us for the sins we commit, as we are committed to forgive people that sin against us. And then he ends it with this request that God the Father would not lead us into temptation. There’s two things here. Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I want to look at three things that this prayer request is actually asking of God. That when you are praying in light of the spiritual warfare and the trenches that you find yourself in, there are three components here that are really helpful. And number one, when I ask God to not lead me into temptation but deliver me from evil, I’m praying that He would

1. Please direct me away from trials & temptations.

God, I recognize that my day is going to be full of trials and temptations. Even if it’s the best day ever planned, there are going to be its own unique sets of trials and temptations. But if we are going to pray this, then…

1. We must first examine the depth of our love for God & then our attitude towards sin.

Some of us might not pray this because we really don’t want to be directed away from temptation. And this is where we need to look at our own heart.

1. A genuine love for God and a love for sin are fundamentally incompatible.

God, a love for God and a love for sin are like oil and water, they do not mix. Proverbs 8:13 says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate.” You can’t say that you love God and want to avoid temptation if you love your sin. Pride and arrogance in the evil way and the perverted mouth, God says, I hate. So we need to examine ourselves and ask ourselves, is our sorrow over our sin driven by a genuine desire to know God and to reconcile with God, or is it primarily focused on preserving my own pleasures and my own possessions of the things that temptation and sins bring?

• Is your sorrow over sin driven by a genuine desire to reconcile with God or is it primarily focused on preserving your own pleasures and possessions?

What is the motivation for seeking God to direct me away from my temptations? Is it my love for God, or is there inside of me just a sorrow for the consequences that my sin brings? You know, the apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 7:9 wrote this letter correcting the Corinthian church, and they were very sad after the first letter they received from him. And so he writes to appeal to them again, and he tells them, “I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.  10  For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” Paul says, I rejoice not just because you were sorrowful, but that your sorrow produced genuine repentance.

And then he goes on to define what he means by this, verse 10, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.” Do you hear Paul talking about two different kinds of sorrow over sin? There’s a sorrow that leads to repentance because I love God. I’m more sorry what I did to God than I am about the consequences of my sin.

But there is a sorrow that is not a sorrow that is accompanied with repentance. It’s a sorrow for the things that my sin produces, the bad results, the consequences. And Paul says that is a legitimate sorrow, but it doesn’t bring repentance, and it actually produces death because of the sorrow of the world. Is your sorrow driven by a genuine desire to reconcile with God and to love God? When I’m asking to direct me away from trials and temptations, I need to examine my heart. Psalm 66:18, “If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear” God knows our heart. It’s foolish to try to pull the wool over his eyes or to be dishonest in prayer, not to be utterly transparent. If you love your sin and you’re going to go to pray to him, tell him, God, I hate my, I love my sin. I’m struggling, I know I shouldn’t, and I need help here, but I am really attracted to whatever this is that I know is not pleasing to you.

• Do you truly hate sin, not just for its consequences, but because it grieves the heart of God? Do you long to be rid of anything that hinders your relationship with God?

That’s the mindset you need to have to be able to really pray this prayer. Please direct me away from my trials and temptations. Isaiah 59:2 “:  But your iniquities…” That’s your sin, your transgressions, iniquity. It’s a big word for, there’s lots of words in the Bible for sin that describe a unique aspect of it in a lot of ways, but iniquity is that which made, that gets between me and God. And he says, “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” How does that strike you when you think of that? And your sins have hidden this face from you so that he will not hear. He does not hear.

1. Do I allow temptation to linger in my life, giving it room to grow and potentially lead to sin? Or am I proactive in resisting temptation and fleeing from it, as Scripture urges us to do.

That’s what this prayer is. God, please direct my steps this day away from temptation and trials. Well, why would I pray this? We could assume from this that God might lead me into temptation. Lead us not into temptation. Why would I ask God to “not lead me into temptation”? Well, let’s look at that.

• God will never induce anyone to sin.

You need to understand this. God hates sin and therefore he will never induce anyone into sin. There are multiple verses in the Bible I could have given you. But James 1:3 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”;” In other words, God must have some kind of secret desire that He has not made known to other people. Otherwise, He would get rid of this temptation in my life. He must want me to do this because I’m gonna fall. We call that self-pity. I can’t control myself anymore. And James makes it clear, “God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” 1 John 1:5, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”

1. If this is so, then why ask God not to do something He would never do anyways?God does give people over to their sin by simply withdrawing His restraining influences.

That’s what it seems he did with Pharaoh when we’re told that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It seems that God withdraws his restraining influence and all he has to do is just let them go where they would naturally go.

• Jesus is not making an assertion about God’s nature that the Father has some secret desire that we sin. Rather, he is teaching that we need to be aware of our tendency, proclivity, towards sin.

I need to be aware, God, I have a proclivity, a tendency, a nature. There’s something about certain sins that do attract me. And I’m asking that you would lead me away from those things that will cause me to stumble.

• I must ask God to identify any influence in my life that draws me away from Him.

Do not lead us into temptation as God. Please lead me from any influence. Identify it to me. Give me wisdom on how to abstain or to stay away from any traps that had the potential to draw me away from you. My friends, that might look different for a lot of us. We all struggle with sin, but we don’t all necessarily struggle with the same types of sins. And so,

1. When we pray “do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil” we are praying that God would direct the course of our day away from any situation that would expose the weakness of our flesh.

Jesus told his disciples, in Matthew 26:41 that “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Please direct my steps from anything away that will expose the weakness of my flesh. Do you ask God to help you avoid the dangers and troubles that sin creates in your life? It creates a lot of trouble. And it’s so deceitful because it offers pleasure. We don’t sin because it’s not fun.

We sin because we find something, some kind of pleasure out of it. Whether it be I get some kind of control back in my life, whether it is that I’m comforted by something that I just feel like I have to have, or whether it is I find some new significance in my life. We do, we sin because of those things. We desire control, comfort, and significance. And so we step outside of God’s plan to try to fit that into our lives, and that’s what sin is. And I realize that we all have our own unique challenges there.

1. Do you seek to avoid the danger and trouble that sin creates?

Psalm 1:1 says “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” How happy is the man who is watching the influences within his life. He’s cautious about the things he lets influence him.

• Do you have a firm grasp on the attractive power of sin in your life?

Scripture is continually admonishing us to flee immorality, 1 Corinthians 6-11, to flee youthful lusts, 2 Timothy 2-22, to flee idolatry, 1 Corinthians 10-14, to flee the love of money, 1 Timothy 6-11, because the power that sin has to allure us away from God. It’s so deceitful. It promises big, but in the end it stings like a cobra.

So Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lord, I’m about to close this prayer out, and I’m asking that you would direct my steps away from the temptations and the trials that will expose the weakness of my flesh, because I acknowledge to you that I am not a perfect man.” But this prayer is also a prayer of asking God…

1. Please defend me amidst my trials & temptations

Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil, because we are in the presence of evil. I’m not only in the presence of an evil world system that is governed by an evil governor named the devil, but I am also in the presence of a sinful evil nature that lives inside of me that is at war with my spirit which God has caused to be born again and that wants to do his will. I’m asking God knowing to direct my steps away from trials and temptations and whatever would expose the weakness of my flesh, and I am praying that you would defend me in the middle of it.

As we look at this, I need to explain something about God’s nature. We need to understand that…

1. God’s knowledge of the past, present, & future is perfect; His testing is never for the purpose of His own personal discovery.

He doesn’t have to guess at the future, just make, he’s not like an expert gambler or psychologist that just makes good guesses all the time. No, God has perfect knowledge of the past, present, and future. But he does test us for his own purposes, but he never tests us, his people, for his own personal discovery as if he did not know something. God knows everything.

In Isaiah 46:9 he says, “Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me,  ¹⁰  Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;” How can God be so sure? Because he has perfect knowledge of the future.

1. The Bible often describes God as acquiring knowledge, changing His mind, or regretting something to describe God’s actions in terms that we can understand, even though they do not necessarily reflect the full reality of God’s nature.

What I mean is there are times when we read God tested Abraham to see what was in his heart. Now I know. Now I know that you fear God. When he tests Abraham in Genesis 22, he tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And Abraham faithfully follows the Lord, and as the knife is raised, he sends an angel to intervene. And God says, now I know that you fear the Lord. Did God not know something? No, God knows it, but oftentimes God, in scriptures, is described in ways for us to understand. Or perhaps you might remember in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from God. And do you remember what God’s first question was? Where are you? If God not really know where Adam and Eve are, of course he does.

So, if Jesus is teaching us to pray that the Father would lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, why again is he teaching us to pray something that God would never do? We need to remember that He is teaching us to be aware of our tendency towards sin. Please direct my steps away from trials and temptations, and please protect me, because I am in the middle. Defend me, I’m in the middle of a trial, in the middle of temptation. You see, God knows you can overcome in His strength, and He desires to equip you for every good work.

• God allows His children to be tested as a way of strengthening their faith in Him.

God allows us to be tempted. Make no mistake about it. That’s why Jesus tells us to pray, deliver us from evil. It’s not that God desires us to do evil, but he does desire to strengthen our faith. He desires our good. Now the devil’s temptations are quite different. The devil’s temptations are purpose specifically to lead us away from God and to lead us into sin, into rebellion against God.

1. God’s testing is for the purpose of showing you your heart & to produce a deeper sense of self-awareness & self-distrust.

We live in a culture that says just trust your heart, when the Bible says the opposite. And God will allow you to go through temptations to show you, you wanna trust that dark thing inside your chest? Proverbs 28:26 says “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But he who walks wisely will be delivered.” God allows us to go through trials and temptations to show us ourselves the weakness of our own heart that we’re not as strong as we think we are.

1. We often have difficulty discerning the true nature of God’s grace in our heart.

And so he allows us to go through temptation, not only to show our heart, but also to produce in us a sense of dependence upon him.

When Abraham in Genesis 22 is told to sacrifice his only son, by the way, that is something that in the book of Exodus and thereon is forbidden. Matter of fact, I could even say it’s forbidden in Genesis nine. Human sacrifice forbidden. God tells Abraham to do something that he forbids elsewhere. Why is God doing that? He is testing Abraham’s faithfulness, not because he doesn’t know, but to show Abraham his heart that he loved God son.

• Abraham might not have fully known the extent of his own faith unless God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac.

And Abraham might not have fully known the extent of his faith unless God commanded him to sacrifice the most precious relationship on this planet. God intervenes. And God will give, you know, I’ve heard it said that God will not give me more than I can handle. Can I amend that for you?

• God will give me more than I can handle apart from my dependence upon His grace in my life.

God won’t give you more than you can handle if you are dependent upon him, but he will give you more than you can handle if you’re not dependent upon him. And these trials and temptations reveal my dependence upon him.

• God’s purpose in testing us is to reveal the sufficiency of His grace and our need to rely upon Him.

His purpose is to reveal his sufficiency of grace in my life and my need to rely upon that grace. Do you remember the apostle Peter? The night that Jesus was going to be betrayed beforehand at the dinner table, the last supper, he tells them in Matthew 26:31 “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’  ³²  “But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” Now here comes old Peter in verse ³³: “But Peter said to Him, ‘Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.’” Oh, blessed, confident Peter. They may all do it, they all may betray you, but God, I know my heart, I will never fall away and betray you, Jesus, never. And Jesus says to him “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”  ³⁵  Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too.” And if you know the story, Peter ends up denying Jesus three times and goes away weeping bitterly.

Why did Jesus let Peter go through that? I think it was to show Peter his need to depend upon the Lord in the weakness of his heart. It’s not that God desired Peter to betray Jesus by denying he ever knew him. God did use the moment to teach Peter a lesson that his confidence in his abilities is misplaced if he’s not dependent upon the grace of God. So God allows a testing in our lives to reveal the sufficiency of his grace and the need to rely upon him. But also…

1. God allows us to through trials and temptations for the purpose of disciplining us for disobedience.

I was reminded of the letter to the Corinthians, the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter five. Paul tells the church, there was a young man there who had been having sexual relations with his stepmother, and the church, didn’t correct the young man or do anything about it. They actually applauded the grace of God that this young man could still go to heaven and be right with the Lord, even though he was involved in a very scandalous sexual relationship that Paul says, even the pagans don’t do. And Paul tells them in chapter five, verse five, “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” God will allow an estranged Christian to go through specific temptations and trials because of their disobedience in order to bring them back.

• God allows us to through trials & temptations for the purpose of spiritual growth which produces godly maturity.

1 Peter 5:10 says, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” Notice that Peter says, “after you’ve suffered for a little while”. God will let you, his saint, suffer for a while through trials and temptations in order to strengthen you and to establish you. Again, that’s why we pray. Please defend me in the middle of my trials and temptations. James says that we’re actually to welcome these sorts of trials into our lives so the value that they have in producing spiritual growth in us. James says that we are to actually welcome these sorts of trials into our lives for the value they have in producing spiritual growth within us.

1. I must ask God to increase my endurance in resisting temptation.

That’s what it means to pray that the Lord would defend me in the middle of trials and temptations. I am asking him, increase my endurance, increase my resistance. Lots of people take vaccines to increase their resistance to some virus that’s going around. We take vaccines to increase the resistance. God actually lets you get stronger by being in the presence of trials and temptations, and you will never completely avoid all trials and temptations so long as you live in this world. But God will defend you in the middle of them. He will give you the power. And that’s why James says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,” Consider it joy? What kind of people is he writing to? Am I supposed to be joyful when I’m going through a trial and happy that I’m being tempted? James is saying this because the trial is fun. He says it is because “knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”  When you’re asking God to defend you in the middle of your trials and temptations, you are saying, “God, I’m asking you to increase my endurance. Give me the strength to withstand the onslaught of temptation in my life.” You need this. The devil knows how to tempt you in ways that might not work on other people, but it works on you. It works on some other people, but maybe everyone doesn’t struggle with the exact same thing necessarily. And so thirdly, when I ask God, to deliver me from evil. Do not lead me to temptation, but deliver us from evil. I am praying, please deliver me out of my trials and temptations. Please direct my steps away from trials and temptations. If I can avoid them, I don’t even wanna be the president. When I am in the middle of them, please help me to be strong. Defend me in the middle of them, help me to be strong. And then lastly…

1. Please deliver me out of my trials & temptations.

Help me to make it through. And if you sincerely pray this, then you must pray with the intention of submitting your whole life to God. You cannot pray this with sincerity if you’re not sincerely ready to submit to God everything that he calls upon you to submit to. Everything, everything, my pride, my sense of control. My lust, my desire for comfort, even good things, the things I desire for that are good, but then I want them too much. You know what our biggest problem is with temptation? It’s  not the bad things as much as it is the good things that we want too much. God, please deliver me from my need to control my life. My need to, my sin of not trusting you because I’m trying to control everything. God, please deliver me from seeking comfort outside of what you’ve given me.

That was Jesus’ prayer, I would think, when he was being tempted in the wilderness. And the devil says, he’s been fasting for 40 days, and the devil comes to him and says, you’re hungry, turn these bread to stone. And Jesus says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God. The devil was tempting Jesus to find comfort and relief in something that is good and wholesome, bread. But it wasn’t Jesus’ time. And so, The devil tempts Jesus to take something that’s good and to use it in a way that God has told him not to. His father has told him not to.

1. God requires our submission in order to overcome temptation.

The very act of calling out to him for deliverance from evil implies our submission to him. Deliver me, I am submitting to you. And James says that it is our submission to God that gives us fortitude. It gives us a backbone when it comes to resisting the devil. I was talking with someone the other day. I’m not trying to attack the younger generation, but just how little spine so many of them have. We can do that, I guess, because we’re getting older and we think we’re tougher. We were probably just as weak when we were young. But you know, fortitude, the ability to take something for a little bit and not be a sissy and whine about it. And we’re talking about it and we’re saying, you know, yeah, I don’t wanna create sissies, I don’t wanna create bullies, but I also don’t wanna create sissies. And we need fortitude in this spiritual life. And James says that it’s our submission to God that builds fortitude.

James 4:7 “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” In my younger years, I used to always quote half that verse. Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. Oh God, there’s a temptation. Resist the devil and he’ll flee from you. Resist. Willpower, willpower, willpower. No, no, no. Now I have to go back and remember, the first part is more important than the second part. Submit to God. You cannot willpower your way out of temptation very long. It’s eventually going to get you if all you’re doing is trying to willpower your way out of it. It is your submission to God that will make the devil get tired of it, of tempting you. You ever imagine how frustrated of a being the devil must be? Think about this. He comes to the Christian and he tempts him. Whatever the temptation is, don’t let them talk to you like that. Don’t let them talk. Who do they think they are? You need to go tell them this. It comes to you as a temptation, whatever it is, right? And then you go to the Lord. God, I feel like I’m being mistreated. I feel like I’m being mistreated. And I want to go say this because what they’re doing is wrong and I feel this way. But you know what? You say, vengeance is not mine, vengeance is yours, says the Lord. And I submit myself to you. And I pray that you would direct me away from this temptation. That you would defend me as I’m going from it and help me to come out of it alive. You walk away a little more strengthened. Five minutes later, those thoughts come back. That’s not right that they talk to you like that. Oh. God, I come back to you again. And you do that. And you know what the devil’s trick is doing to you? It’s actually deepening your relationship with God. And you can laugh at him out loud. You keep telling me to do this. Ha ha, sucker, I’m just getting closer to God. Laugh at him. I love something that I heard once read by Martin Luther, the famous monk of Germany. He said, learn to scorn the devil. Laugh at him, because his chief sin is pride, and he hates it when he’s made fun of. Laugh at him and say, you know what, God’s greater than you. I will keep going to him. You must submit to God. The intensity of your desire to overcome sin in your life will be seen in the time you spend in God’s word & prayer.

• I must ask God to show me the way of escape from my temptations.

I need God to show me the way of escape. If I am going to pray that He would deliver me out of my trial, out of my temptation, I’m asking Him then, show me the way of escape. There is a way to overcome. God, I am looking for the strategy that you’ve put the open door before me that will allow me to overcome this.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 13, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man;” Let me explain some to you. Paul is saying here, yes, we all might have unique temptations in the sense that I might struggle with a particular kind of temptation more than perhaps my wife does and vice versa. However, I don’t struggle with any temptation that someone else in the world has never struggled with. And Paul is saying, you are not so unique to the temptations and trials you go to, or somehow unique to you, and that God is unfair because no one else has ever gone through it. No temptation has overtaken you, but just normal common temptations to man. And he says, but, this is the important part, “God is faithful.” We are talking about the nature of God. Do you believe that God is faithful? When you’re going through temptation, that gets tested, doesn’t it? God, I’m going to fall. I don’t think I can resist much longer. In essence, I’ll begin to question his faithfulness.

“God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,” to bear. That’s where we get, God won’t give me anything I can handle. However, it’s only when I’m dependent upon Him because He says, “but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” My friends, God will deliver you. And sometimes it’s harder than other times.

God is using those things in your life to reveal your heart. To reveal something that you probably don’t want to look at and acknowledge that my heart is really like this. And it’s embarrassing, isn’t it? And I don’t want to believe that about myself. But until I see that about myself, I will never learn to truly depend upon Christ and what He’s done for me on the cross. Jesus died for you. He died for your sin. He died to set you free from it, not so that you can keep on in it and enjoy satisfying the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and your own personal sense of pride. He died to set you free from it. Not only the consequences of eternity without God in the lake of fire, and the consequences of the guilty feelings that come from my sin, He came also to deliver you and to save you from the very power of sin in your life today.

That freedom comes by coming to Christ, acknowledging that I am a helpless sinner, and I am bound to keep offending you and to sin against you, and I deserve every bit of judgment you pour out upon me. God, your Word says, you are not mocked. I will reap what I have sown. I look at my life and I say, yes, these things are my fault. But God, you’ve died for my sins. You sent your son Jesus to die. To set me free, yes, from an awful future, but you also died to set me free from the power of sin in my life today. And as I get my eyes on you and on what you’ve done for me, you loved me enough to do that for me? God, help me to love you enough to be able to kill my sin. Father, you have killed your son for me. Help me to love you enough that I will kill my sin for you. Jesus, you rose from the dead, and you’ve given everyone who calls on your name power over this sin. And one day, you are going to set me completely free from the very presence of sin. My friends,

• God will deliver you for the sake of His kingdom, power, and glory.

Remember what Jesus says, that last line is in, “but deliver us from evil, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” That is God’s purpose. It is to bring glory to Himself. As you overcome temptation and sin, you glorify God in the process because you are saying no to something that has some appeal to you because you believe there is something else better than you’re gonna hold out against that smaller pleasure to get a greater pleasure that you believe that you’re gonna find in God. That is called worship. Did you ever think that every time you resist temptation, you are actually worshiping God. You are worshiping God when you simply say, No, as much as there is that thing inside of me, that allure, that temptation, God you told me no. And I know that what you have for me is better, for you are good.

Do you love God because He’s God? Or do you love God because He’s a beneficial, helpful guy to have around in your life? That’s what it comes down to, really, isn’t it? Acknowledge, as I do, my lovelessness towards Christ. I love Him, but I don’t love Him nearly as much as I should. And that’s the good news of the Gospel.

Jesus died for that and regardless of how guilty you feel unworthy you feel Jesus died to set you free and He will receive you and he will judge you not after you receive Christ as your Lord and Savior He will judge you not on the basis of your struggles of your ability to to withstand sin He will judge you on the Jesus’s ability to have overcome sin That’s the good news

Lord I come to you now. I confess to you. I don’t love you the way that I should. I do love you. Lord, I don’t love you nearly the way that you’ve loved me. Lord, this is evident not only by the things that I do, but the things that I leave undone. I confess to you that I’ve not sought you with my whole heart and I asked that you would forgive me. Such a great God, such a great creator who loved me enough to not only create me knowing that I would be a rebel, but then sending your son, your only son, your beloved son to be a sacrifice for my sin, and to receive me back through his atoning death and resurrection. God, I know that in that I am loved and I receive this gift of grace from you through your son, Father. Thank you for eternal life. And I pray that you would lead me away from temptation. I ask that you would help me while I’m in the middle of it, defend me, strengthen me, and show me the way of escape. Lord, deliver us from evil, we pray. In your name we ask Jesus, amen.