21 days Prayer & Fasting:
Day 19: Prayer brings an awareness that there is a spiritual battle
Our anchor scripture for today is found in Matthew 6: 12 (NET) and it reads: “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” Earlier this week, we were introduced to principles of temptation from James 1: 13-15 and Matthew 4:1 . Taken together, these passages teach us that: 1. Temptation itself is not the sin; 2. Temptation can occur in the place God has led you to (Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden of Eden) even though it is not God that does the tempting and 3. The devil tries to use our desires to lure us away from the perfect will of God. Therefore, when Jesus asked his disciples to pray, he was teaching his disciples to rely on the power of God to deliver them from the devil. When we are tempted, we are usually weak because it is our desires that brought us to that place. We, therefore, need help from another to overcome that temptation. Jesus is telling us to rely on the power of God. The power of the Lord is able to make us strong even when we are weak.
