Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name.I once had a car that lost compression in one of the cylinders. That meant that it lost 25% of its power and the engine ran rough because the broken cylinder threw off the timing sequence.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Amen
If I had been closer to home when it happened it would not have been so annoying. But I was out in the middle of the desert driving toward Phoenix, Arizona. And it would have taken hours to get someone out there to have the car towed. Oh, and did I mention that it was late at night? Dark, dark, dark.
So I decided to drive it to town on the remaining three cylinders. I could not get the car to go faster than 35 miles per hour and sometimes if I slowed down it completely lost power. But eventually I figured out the optimum speed and that I needed to avoid stopping at the stop signs.
As I drove along using the three working cylinders in the engine, in my mind I shifted from a crisis mode into a limping-along mode. No, it was not a perfect pleasant ride but it was good enough. I adjusted my expectations and eventually got home.
We live in a world that is not hitting on all cylinders. The engine is not running as smoothly as it was created to run. Somewhere along the way a cylinder went out and that completely messed up the timing and the power. So, we live in a system that is in a limping-along mode. It is certainly not a perfect pleasant ride -- and we all know that. But we have all more or less adjusted to the reality of the state of the world.
Using theological terms we call this "the fall." In Genesis 3 God's beautiful creation get's messed up because Adam and Eve make some selfish choices and enter into sin.
Ever since people have followed in their sinful footsteps -- and the world continues to struggle forward, not hitting on all cylinders. Sometimes it is just annoying -- but sometimes like driving a car with a bad cylinder it can get pretty dangerous. (We end up running some stop signs to keep the engine going!)
The reality of the matter is that we live in a very messed up world. In a nutshell, the problem is sin. We saw in the last section that sin is anything and everything in thought, word, and deed that is contrary to the will of God.
In your PIU theology class you will explore more of what all that means but for the moment I want to suggest that sin manifests itself in four ways.
1. My personal sins -- Because we are born into a sinful world -- a world in which the image of God within us has been damaged -- we make selfishly wrong choices. Even when we are making healthy and godly choices we still struggle with the temptation to do otherwise. Each person struggles with the temptation to sin.
2. Someone else's personal sin -- Other people make selfish and wrong choices that affect you. If you are injured in a crash because another driver was drunk you are the victim of that person's sinful choices.
3. Corporate or group sin -- Some of the problems in the world cannot be traced back to an individual but to choices that groups make. If a society decides that it needs to pollute the air in order to have factories which provide jobs, there is something sinful about that. It damages the creation and harms individuals -- even though perhaps other individuals are helped.
Spiritual oppression or demonic activity is an extreme form of sin that can occur through #1-#3. Sometimes people are bothered by spirits because they have made some sinful choices which provided those spirits a foothold in their life. Sometimes people are bothered by spirits which seem to be around because others near them have been involved in occult or demonic activity. And sometimes whole groups or societies give spirits a place in their culture through institutionalized practices which involve consulting, calling on, or appeasing the spirits.
That is, there are a number of reasons that evil spirits might be a struggle -- all of them are related to sin of some sort.
4. General sinfulness related to nature -- Because of the fall we are out of touch with the rhythm of nature. Storms, earthquakes, tsunamis and brush fires destroy property and life. Before the fall we would have known how to avoid such dangers but now, in our current state of confusion, they cause pain and are thus a part of the sinful state of disarray.
I mention all of these types of sin because any or all of them provide the context for trials and temptations. In the New Testament the Greek word (peirazo) for a trial is the exact same word as that used to describe a temptation. I would suggest that generally speaking, if we are dealing with #1 above -- "my personal sin" we call it temptation. The ordeal is that we are being tempted to enter into personal sin.
In itself, being tempted is not sin. It is how we respond to the temptation that matters.
If we are dealing with #2 - #4 above we might call the ordeal related to those manifestations of sin a trial. You as an individual are not personally responsible for the trial. That is, you are not necessarily being tempted to sin. It is not coming your direction because of your poor choices or because you as an individual are being tempted to make a poor choice. It is there through no personal fault of your own. But you still have to deal with it. You have to overcome the ordeal -- the trial.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "The temptations [or trials] in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation [trial] to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted [tried], he will show you a way out so that you can endure."
In some ways it does not really matter whether we call the struggle a temptation or a trial. The line between the two ideas is very thin and what started out as a trial caused by someone else can easily become a temptation.
For example, it is not your fault if your parent's marriage fails. It is, however, a trial that you have to overcome because their sin and their failure makes your life more difficult. But there is also a sense that this can become a temptation, too. The temptation would be that you begin to think only of yourself and your own needs. You begin to actually enjoy some of the power that comes through playing the role of a victim -- and you grow bitter.
This is a very long route to introduce the fourth segment or section of the Lord's Prayer -- Intervention.
1. Praise, Thanksgiving, Adoration (PTA)When you come to this part of the prayer you repeat the words "Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil" and then you begin to bring to our heavenly Father the struggles in your life and in the lives of the people around you. In doing so you are asking God to intervene -- to get involved with the crisis -- the trial -- the temptation. You are admitting that you cannot succeed on your own and that you need God's help.
2. Intercession and Petition (IP)
3. Confession
4. Intervention
5. Celebration
You already know that trials and temptations are very similar. In this portion of the prayer you are asking God to intervene in them. You are asking him to protect you from the evil that is in the world -- whether it is there because of your own doing or just because you live in a fallen world that is only running on three cylinders.
In this intervention portion of the prayer you might ask for protection, resistance, and deliverance. This would be an appropriate time to talk with God about those people who are experiencing crises -– victims of disasters, family issues or dysfunction, the impoverished, the unemployed, the chronically and perpetually ill, the persecuted and suffering church. Pray for your country, that you as a people might resist injustice and evil -- indifference to the poor, corruption, and greed.
It might even be that you are praying for yourself because you, as a follower of Christ, are under attack. Attacks from the devil and his evil spirits shouldn't surprise us. Jesus was tempted by the devil. He suffered on the cross. And many early believers were beaten, jailed, and killed for their faith.
That hasn't changed so much. I recently read that more people have died for their faith in Christ over the last 100 years than the previous 1,900 years combined. These are not peaceful times.
We are still in the middle of a great struggle. As the apostle Paul wrote, "For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places." ~ Ephesians 6:12 (NLT)
These are the trials and temptations that seem to be on Jesus' mind when he gives his followers the Lord's Prayer.
Some translations of the Lord's Prayer render this section as "lead us not into temptation." But that is a bit confusing because it is not implying that God is the one who tempts us. To the contrary, the point is that God wants to help us overcome temptation.
There are times when God tests our faith to help us grow stronger (for example, God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son in Genesis 22). But those kinds of tests seem to be rare. It is more likely that God will use the trials and temptations we already face and turn them into growth opportunities for us.
I would even suggest that it might be useful to translate the line "save us from the time of trial" as "save us through the time of trial." For as we overcome the trials and temptations we are saved in the sense that our faith grows stronger -- we trust God more and more. God is using them and through them we become solid disciples.
The apostle Peter writes:
Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you. Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world. ~ 1 Peter 4:12-13 (NLT)Our world is not running on all of its assigned cylinders but that does not matter so much because we have a heavenly Father who rescues us. The good news that we encounter in the intervention portion of the prayer is that he is not only on our side when it comes to facing struggles but that we become partners with Christ in his suffering -- and also in his victory.
ASSIGNMENT #14
1. Describe in your own words the difference between a trial and a temptation. How are they similar? (10 points possible)
2. Make a list of 10-15 trials, temptations, or manifestations of evil that you would include in your own prayers in this section. Be specific but you do not have to reveal personal details if you do not want to. (10 points possible)
3. We are not alone in our struggles. We have a savior who has been through similar struggles. Think about the life of Jesus and write a few paragraphs describing the trials and temptations that he faced. (10 points possible)
4. BONUS: How is the idea of asking our heavenly Father to intervene as we face challenges related to the other sections of the prayer? That is, in what sense is this portion of the prayer dependent on what we've already learned about Jesus' agenda in the other portions? (Well developed responses can earn up to 15 extra bonus points)
Again, email your essay to me at bboydston@piu.edu. Write your answers in the email itself -- or if you use a word processor, copy and paste the answers into the email. Make sure that your name, the name which you used to register for this class, appears at the top of the work.
I will respond to you as soon as possible. Do not wait for a response from me before you start working on your next assignment.
