The Lord’s Prayer. Deliver Us From Evil
“Lead us not into temptation.” This is a part of the Lord’s prayer, which it is well for us often to think upon, so that we may earnestly pray it from our hearts every day, and keep it in our minds. For this will help us to remember our own weakness and how impossible it is for as to meet temptation and overcome it in our own strength.
Do you think that if you really pray this prayer each day you will be likely to run into temptation heedlessly of your own freewill? Surely you will not want to run where you have earnestly prayed that the Lord will not lead you.
Yet there are some who think that they are strong enough to endure temptation, so they do not try to keep away from it, but even sometimes place themselves in the way of it. Such are sure to fall into the very temptation that they thought they were strong to resist. For our greatest weakness is to trust in ourselves, and think that we are strong. But our greatest strength is to know that we have no strength whatever, for then we shall cling always to the mighty arm of Jesus our Saviour, and hide under His wing for shelter. So “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take head lest he fall.”
If only Eve had turned her back on the tempter, and not listened to his enticing words, and looked at the tempting fruit that he held out to her, how much of sin, sorrow, suffering, and death, she might have saved herself and all her family.
Last month we printed some verses containing a “Lesson from a Spider’s Web” to teach you the danger of going needlessly into temptation. You can look them up for yourself, but we will quote a few of the verses here:—
“I sat here one day, when there came by the way
A silly young bottlefly buzzing along;
He tossed up his head, and so boastingly said,
“I’m sure there’s no danger, because I’m so strong.
“‘With one stroke of my wing I’ll demolish this thing,
Where so many poor, weak, foolish creatures have died;’
Then in vain, pompous way, the young bottlefly gay
Rushed up to the web in his confident pride.
“But these strong little strings caught his silvery wings,
And soon to his horror the bottlefly found
That he, too, must die, like a poor, common fly,
Though he fluttered, and tugged, and buzzed wildly around.”
But when, without our seeking it, or running into it, we meet temptation and trial, then we may pray with trust and confidence to our Heavenly rather, “Deliver us from evil.” He is able to keep us from failing and is even more anxious to keep us spotless than we are to be kept from sin.
There is only one way that we can overcome temptation, and be delivered from evil. Jesus tells us the only way, when He says: “Overcome evil with good.”
Yet in us “dwelleth no good thing,” so of ourselves we have no good with which to “overcome evil.” For “there is none good but one, that is, God,” and everything that is good must come from Him. So we may read this in its true meaning, “Overcome evil with God.”
And this is just what His Word tells us to do; for “He gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver as from this present evil world.” God has given us Himself, so that we may be able to overcome all evil.
Have you received the wondrous gift? and do you know His power to keep you? You cannot get the evil out of your heart in any other way than by letting Him come in. Then His presence in your heart will drive out evil, because “evil cannot dwell with Him.”
What is the only way that you can get rid of darkness? It is by letting light shine in, and then where is the darkness? It is overcome, swallowed up, by the light, so that it disappears completely, and is not.
All evil is darkness, which the light of the Son of Righteousness only can dispel. But when He arises and shines in our hearts, where will the darkness or the evil be? It will be destroyed by the brightness of His shining, just as the light of day causes the darkness of night to vanish away. Only light can overcome darkness; only good can overcome evil; only life can overcome death; and only God can overcome Satan.
Are you not glad that “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts”? When you feel any evil thought rising up in your mind, any naughty temper in your heart, any unkind word coming to your lips, will you not remember that He has given Himself to save you from this evil? Will you not ask Him to shine it all away, and overcome the evil with His own goodness?
Then as you learn more and more to know His power over all the power of Satan, you will be able to sing with new meaning the beautiful Psalm of David, that you well know:—
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me.”
The Present Truth – December 27, 1900
E. J. Waggoner