Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Jesus is reminding us that there is a strong power of evil in this world seeking to pull us down When we pray this part of the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to help us hold on to our faith when those tough times of temptations and trials come. I got to thinking about a documentary I saw about sea turtles on the Discovery Channel. There mommas haul themselves on the beach, lay their eggs, and bury the eggs in the sand. The odds of a baby sea turtle making it to adulthood are one in twenty-five hundred because there are predators everywhere trying to take their livies. We live in a predatory world. There are forces of evil and darkness all around us that have one desire and that is to destroy your life by keeping you frustrated, defeated, broken, and keeping you from God. That’s the goal of evil. So when we pray, “Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” we are not praying ‘deliver me from Blue Bell or keep me from the mall or keep me from too much Facebook.’ We are praying to God that when evil and sufferings come, “God help me to hold on. Don’t let me lose my faith, don’t let me turn my back on you. Don’t let the predators win.”
– Dr. Tim Thompson