“Why does Jesus teach us to pray, ‘lead us not into temptation’? God wouldn’t lead us into temptation anyway would he? Isn’t it Satan who tempts us?” This conundrum was posed me in a recent Sunday school class. It’s a great question, especially given the biblical context of a text like James 1:13-15: 13 When […]
Lead us Not Into Temptation
August 4, 2016 By
No one plans on tramping through a poison ivy patch (at least not anyone (like me) who has a known poison ivy (hyper)sensitivity!). No one purposes to swim in shark infested waters, or in a toxic waste dump site. No one intentionally gets ambushed by banditti. These dangers befall the unaware, the unsuspecting. It isn’t […]
Forgive Us Our Debts As We Forgive Our Debtors
July 28, 2016 By
The fifth petition is “forgive us our debts.” A consideration of God and his holiness, will, and kingdom will necessarily make us cognizant of our own sin and need of forgiveness. We can’t draw near to God without simultaneously recognizing how far we are from him. Repentance is always the appropriate response to a holy […]
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
July 21, 2016 By
Sometimes prayer becomes a laundry list. “God, please help me get this job. Please heal John’s gout. Please help Marie with her sciatic pain. I’d love to have good weather for Sunday’s picnic. Also…peace on the earth.” And so on. We all have stuff we’d like to have from God. There’s nothing inherently wrong with […]
The Lord’s Prayer: Parallel Petitions
July 14, 2016 By
I’ve never considered myself to be especially strong as a poet. I love to write, but I’m far more prosy than otherwise. But I can appreciate poetry, and the Bible is certainly full of loads of it. The Psalms take a poetic form, obviously, but so too do the wisdom books, huge swaths of the […]
