"Lead Us Not Into Temptation"

1 John 5:18-19 NLT

"We know that God's children do not make a practice of sinning, for God's Son holds them securely, and the evil one cannot touch them. We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one".

The question we have to ask ourselves as followers of Christ is, does God lead us into temptation, or does He allow it to be used to strengthen our faith? If you have attended church or Sunday school, you know that there is someone in the Bible that is named "the tempter", and it is not God. God will allow temptation because He gives us free will, but we decide whether we are going to let temptation lead us into sin. I recently read a quote from an unknown author while researching the word "temptation" that said, "There is always free cheese in a mouse trap". How are you at handling temptation? For me, one of my biggest struggles is food. As silly as that sounds, I am sometimes tempted to overeat when the meal or dessert is really tasty. If my body is His temple, then it no longer belongs to me, but Him. I need to take better care of it by responding to the temptation to get a second helping with prayer, to our Lord and Savior, for strength from His Spirit. Repentance and prayer are gifts the Lord has given us when we give in to temptation. How often do we use those gifts and walk away from our temptations? We were just trained on this by the Holy Spirit of God this past weekend. This weekend at Friendship, we will be exploring the phrase from the Lord's Prayer, "Lead Us Not Into Temptation".