Praying through temptation
This is not an easy one...
I won’t go into any deep details here, but we all have something we struggle with.
Call it sin or call it just something we wrestle with on a personal level.
The Lord’s Prayer specifically calls us to ask, “Don’t let us give in to temptation.”
So that means we have to be praying against and through temptation. And the interesting thing is that the word “tempt” in the Greek is the same as the word “test.”
So, in a way, you could think of it as a test, of sorts.
The word “tempt” implies a hope for failure…but the word “test” implies the hope of success.
We hope someone passes or overcomes a test…we don’t necessarily hope for someone to ignore being tempted.
So, more accurately, we are asking for God to help us to not fail our test, to not give into our testing.
I think it’s a subtle difference, but it’s a difference that makes praying through those temptations and that testing a little bit easier.
My prayer for today
Our Father, grant each of us the capacity to think through what it means to “pass” out testings and temptations. Spirit, give us the strength to overcome when we need it. Amen.
Remember
Failing or giving into a temptation once doesn’t mean that you can’t pray about and learn from the situation. This isn’t a pass or fail one time kind of thing…