In my devotions this morning, I was reading Bruce Wilkinson’s book “The Prayer of Jabez”. I had always heard about it but never had read it. It is a small book and I knocked it out in about an hour of reading. I gained a lot of insight into God’s blessings that I will have to think about more, there is just so much to reflect on. But one thing that really stood out for me was the point that we need to ask God to keep us from temptation.
Keeping us from temptation is different from asking God to help us deal with the temptations that will come along every day. We should be asking God to just keep temptation away from us. Some of you are saying, “Yea, right, temptation is always going to be there… deal with it.” I think Dr. Wilkinson’s statement puts it pretty good:
“Without temptation, we would not sin. Most of us face too many temptations-and therefore sin too often-because we don’t ask God to lead us away from temptation. We make a huge spiritual leap forward, therefore, when we begin to focus less on beating temptation and more on avoiding it.” (The Prayer of Jabez, pg. 67-68)
You might still have doubts. Where in the Bible does it teach us to ask God to help us avoid temptation? Actually, Jesus told us to ask God to help us avoid temptation when he gave us an example of how to pray.
Matthew 6:9-13 (New International Version)
9″This, then, is how you should pray:
” ‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
11Give us today our daily bread.
12Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.'”