Lord's Prayer: Lead Us Not Into TemptationНамуна

These next three days we’ll look at ways we face temptation. Knowing the source of it can help you resist it. The classic way of identifying the sources is to see temptation coming from our flesh, the world, and the devil. Today we’ll look at the flesh.

“Flesh” refers to our created nature – body and soul. Temptation comes from inside of us. Sometimes it’s just an inherent evil that lives inside each of us and has become part of us. We shouldn’t be surprised when the vilest of thoughts and desires come bubbling out of us.

Other times it’s the power of sin either distorting or over-prioritizing our created goodness. Theologians call this concupiscence. Sometimes this is misunderstood as lust, but that’s just part of it. God has built good and healthy desires into each of us. We desire to eat, gaze on beauty, have sex, prosper, protect ourselves and others, seek justice, do something that matters, have purpose, take pride and joy in ourselves as image bearers of God, and so many other things. We have these desires naturally. God hard-wired them into us. They’re part of our “flesh.” Sin corrupts them. It distorts these desires or leads us to feed those desires as the highest good, no matter the cost. Just think of the classic seven deadly sins. They’re not sinful actions in their own right, but distortions of healthy desires and dispositions.

Praying “Lead us not into temptation” is a way we confront this within us. It recognizes a battle within us between flesh and spirit – the corruption of our created selves against the way God has changed and renewed us. It seeks God for strength and discernment in this inner conflict. It cries for help while pledging commitment to choose the way of God over anything within us that competes with him.

Consider this today…

How are you prone to seek your own desires over God’s? Tell him. Then ask him for discernment to recognize those inclinations, for strength in the midst of them, and for resolve to resist them.