The Lord's Prayer, Pt. 3

Forgive us our debts as…

This is, for me, the hardest one. We all have debts. We have indebted ourselves to God by way of our sin. As sinners, we need forgiveness. God, on the basis of the substitutionary death of Christ, forgives us our sin when we trust Him. We trust Him when we place our faith in Christ’s death and resurrection to cover our debts.

But there is a catch here in this prayer. He says we should pray that God would forgive us in the same way and to the same degree that we forgive others. I don’t know about you, but my forgiveness of others is often not as great as my need for forgiveness myself. In other words, I often want God to forgive me more than I’m willing to forgive someone else.

Again, I see this in counseling. One member of a couple will find it hard to forgive the partner for some sin, an infidelity or some such. One of the things we have to learn is that we have sinned against God much more than anyone has sinned against us!

Lead us not into temptation…

Here's another hard one. It would seem that to ask this request is to somehow make God responsible for whether or not we walk into temptation. But I think Jesus is assuming that the prayer (the person praying) is desperately aware of his need to be led. He knows that if left to his own "leading", he will land in destruction, death, and chaos. So, we are to ask God to guide, lead, direct, and protect our very steps. We are to trust God to deliver us from evil or the evil one. “God help me not go down the path to destruction. My very life is in your hands and I need your intervention to keep me from straying into sin.”

For thine is the kingdom…

Finally, all praise, glory, honor, power, reverence is yours! You are creator and sustainer and the beginning and the end. You are the motivation, the goal, and the reward of a life well lived by faith.