Daily Devotion

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.  Amen

Can you name what hymn the following words come from?

Though hordes of devils fill the land
All threatening to devour us,
We tremble not unmoved we stand;
They cannot overpower us.
Though this world’s tyrant rage, in battle we’ll engage
His might is doomed to fail; God’s judgement must prevail!
One little word subdues him.

God’s Word forever shall abide,
No thanks to foes, who fear it;
For God himself fights by our side
With weapons of the Spirit.
If they should take our house, goods, honor, child or spouse,
Though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day.
The kingdom’s ours forever! 

If you said, “A Mighty Fortress” you are correct!  It is Martin Luther’s best known and perhaps best loved hymn.  In these verses we catch a glimpse of Luther’s understanding of the very real presence of the devil and evil, as is also revealed as he writes about these last petitions of the Lord’s Prayer  

Luther is very clear that God is not the “tempter” in our lives when he says in the Small Catechism, “God tempts no one to sin…we ask that God would preserve and keep us so that the devil, the world and our sinful selves may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair and other great and shameful sins.”  Our greatest temptation is to doubt God’s reliability, and to lose trust in God’s ability to preserve and keep us and give us the final victory over evil.  Perhaps one way to think of it is to say that our greatest temptation is to believe we must face life’s struggles and the power of evil alone, without God’s help.

Many in Luther’s day felt that when evil came upon them, it was a sign of God’s punishment and they should not resist it.  Luther held a contrary view, that we are to fight against the power of evil.  Maybe one example for us is that rather than accepting COVID-19 as a sign that God is punishing us, we use the best of our ability to defeat it.  In doing this work we work in harmony with God.  There are many other forms of evil that we fight against as they are contrary to God’s hope for our world.

Finally, when we say “amen” we are saying, “yes, may it be so,” trusting, Luther says, “that such petitions are acceptable to and heard by God in heaven, for God himself commanded us to pray like this and has promised to hear us.”

Reflection: Is the Lord’s Prayer a part of your daily prayer practice?  Why not pray it each day and reflect on which petition has your attention, then go deeper in prayer on what that particular petition is stirring up in you?
 

1 comments on article "Daily Devotion"

Marlyn & Susie Seehafer

Thanks for the great discussion this week on explaining the words of the Lord's Prayer. It makes one think of the meaning besides just saying the words. We enjoyed your special devotion each day.

7/10/2020 3:08 PM

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