There has probably never been a more misunderstood verse of scripture.
How could a perfect, most holy, supreme God lead anyone into sin? And, yet, we let that verse trip fervently off our tongues as if our lives depended on it, almost begging God to stop tempting us.
News flash: God isn't in the tempting business.
Succumbing to temptation separates us from God. That isn't God's will for us. God created us for communion with Him -- not as equals, but as free-willed sons and daughters of a supreme king.
God created us with a free will so that our devotion to him would not be forced; so that when we followed His will, it would be out of love and not fear.
But, because we are not perfect and we have free will, our decision-making is fraught with imperfection. Our imperfections are not personality quirks at which God shakes his head mirthfully, "Oh, those kids..." or "...boys will be boys."
Our imperfection -- our sin -- is abhorrent to God.
The Colonel believes that God created him with all his many imperfections so that he would have no doubt in his military mind that there was a great, impassable gulf between his imperfect sinfulness and God's perfect holiness. The Colonel believes that's why God, when He created man, put the ability of reasoning right from wrong in man's mind; and why at Sinai, God codified right from wrong with His Commandments. God gave us the ability to reason right from wrong and the free will to act on that reasoning, so that as we failed to perfectly follow His will, we would realize that there would never be anything we could do in our own strength to merit entering into the physical presence of a perfect God.
Enter Jesus.
A perfect man, sacrificed to atone for our imperfections; whose blood both literally and figuratively covered our sins in God's eyes.
So, why would Jesus tell us to pray that God would "lead us not into temptation." That just doesn't make sense. God doesn't tempt us.
Well, he's said it before and it bears repeating here -- the Colonel ain't smart and you can't make him. So, the best the Colonel can figure with his pea-sized thought muscle is that Jesus was reminding us that temptation is everywhere in the world and that we can't resist evil without God's deliverance.
It all comes back to God's supremacy. And, it's all right there -- tightly summed up in what we call "the Lord's Prayer."
God created, and orders every atom in, the universe. That awesome God desires a personal relationship with each and every one of the billions of us who have ever lived or will ever live. God desires that we seek His righteousness, and His will in our lives, as a condition for His provision of our every material and spiritual need. Because we all fail to perfectly seek His righteousness and His will in our lives, we all require His forgiveness. God expects us to extend His forgiveness to others -- not in our own strength, but by His power.
Finally, God expects us to resist evil -- not in our own strength, but by His power.
Thence comes deliverance.
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