Deliver Us

"The devil made me do it." If that expression reminds you of Flip Wilson and the Ed Sullivan show, then you are either dating yourself or you've been on YouTube recently. It is a fun way to justify the mysteries of human behavior. Or it can be a statement about the power of a "not yet" world to turn us away from faith and over to the power of sin in our own lives and in our world.

As we reach the climax of the Lord's Prayer this week, we will be struggling with how we define temptation and testing in our own lives, what it means to confront it, and how we understand the forces behind it. We will look carefully at the amazing story of the temptation of Jesus that we find at the very beginning of the Gospel, and asking some of these questions:

•  What is evil and how is it alive and well in God's good world?   
• Why was it necessary for Jesus to be tempted and tested? How did it strengthen him for his ministry? 
• How are we tempted and tested? 
• What are the forces at work in our own lives that pull us away from the will of God and the peace of God? 
• How do we find strength for the journey of faithfulness?  

And so I invite you to consider:

• When has your faith been tested? 
• When have you seen evidence of the power of evil in your life? 
• How did you find your way home?

Our quest is to find a way to affirm and live that God alone is Lord of our lives and Lord of our world. That ultimately it is not about ourselves, but about the reign of God made real, even now.