Jesus Understands Your Temptations – Turn to Him Through Prayer

The very invitation to us to pray implies that there are blessings waiting for us at the mercy seat. Let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace, Charles Spurgeon.

Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your hosts of the Marriage After God podcast, where we encourage you not to just have a good marriage, but to have a powerful one that you would know God and be known by him and that your marriage would be the mighty tool God desires it to be. We wanted to share with you guys a review left by Tasha T 1 1 0 3. It says, I bought 31 prayers for husband and wife and husband and wife after God. I basically bought the husband bundle and wife bundle. My husband is incarcerated and I often buy books for us to read together in hopes to connect. These books have been a blessing in our marriage. It did more than connect us. It has made us one. God has moved in our marriage and we are so grateful. I’ve recommended these books to my married friends.

(01:00)
My husband and I now are reading Marriage After God and I have started listening to your podcast. I’m listening to all the episodes from the beginning. Thank you very much for sharing your story and your ministry. Tasha, thank you so much for leaving this review and sharing your story with us, and I just hope, we just hope that this encourages all those listening just in how impactful sharing our marriage stories can be. We’ve really appreciated having the opportunity to share our story and our message and encouragement of having a marriage after God here on the podcast. So thank you so much for listening.

I’ve been encouraged by messages like this. We’ve actually gotten ’em over the years. There’s been quite a few husbands and wives who unfortunately have a spouse incarcerated, but they use our books to stay connected while they’re apart from each other. We see the same thing happen with people that travel or military. It’s just the reason we wrote these books as separate devotionals is so that they can be done in person together or you could do them apart, which is really awesome.

If you haven’t had a chance yet to leave a review, but you’re an active listener on the podcast, would you take a minute to just leave a review? These are a huge blessing to us and also it helps others find our podcast.

Awesome. So this is the last episode in our eight part series.

Yeah, it feels good to kind of wrap it up.

And we’re going to be finishing up this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter six. So I figured since this is the last one, I’m going to read the whole thing, that whole section, and then we can talk about the last verse. Cool.

Let’s

Do it. So starting in Matthew chapter six, starting in verse five, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received the reward, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this, our father in heaven hollered, be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Now, the last verse that we’re going to be doing in this eighth part of our series is not verses 14 and 15. We actually combined those with verse 14.

You

Said that we combined it with, gosh, where is it at? I’m

Skipping you. Verse 12, forgive us our debt.

Yeah, we combined 14 and 15 with verse 12

Because it talks about forgiveness.

And then, so this last verse we’re going to do is and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Verse 13. Perfect. And so that’s what we’re going to be discussing today is what can we draw out of this portion of the prayer that Jesus teaches as disciples and teaches us and how it can apply to our marriage? And

We’re kind of answering the question too, what is the power of prayer? Because there really is power in prayer and you experience it when you practice prayer and when you are obedient to the discipline of prayer.

Amen. So verse 13, it says, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. There’s something maybe some of our listeners don’t realize, but I believe will be a powerful revelation to many. It was something that was huge for me, and it’s actually two things. The first is the reason Jesus is teaching us to pray this lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil is because he has firsthand personal experience with temptation. We all remember the story in the gospels where Jesus is led when he begins right before he begins his ministry. He’s led into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted. He understands perfectly and exactly how it feels when we as humans are tempted. So he was perfect and he was tempted.

Hebrews four 15 says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

This should be one of the most comforting verses in the Bible

That he knows

That he not just knows, but he can sympathize. He’s aware, and it says in every respect, he’s been tempted as we are and yet he didn’t sin. Which leads me to the second part of this revelation that I think will encourage our listeners about temptation. So how many times have you listener me the speaking you, my wife?

(06:01)
Do you desire to pray more for your spouse? Do you desire to pray more with your spouse? We understand that you may not know where to start or maybe you feel uncomfortable praying or maybe you don’t know what to pray, or maybe you simply want to add something more to your current prayer life. This is why we wrote the Marriage Gift 365 prayers for our Marriage. We desire that it would be used as a daily reminder and catalyst for you and your spouse to grow a dynamic and consistent prayer life together. This book is a compilation of 365 unique and powerful prayers that cover a range of diverse topics that every marriage deals with. You can read it alone or ideally you read it with your spouse. Also, we hope that the topics that are brought up in these prayers would become a starting point for deeper and more intimate conversations with your spouse and a desire to seek God on these matters together. Visit the marriage gift.com today in order your copy and give your marriage the greatest gift, powerful and meaningful prayer. Visit the marriage gift.com today felt guilty or condemned for being tempted. That’s a real question. How often have you’re like, man, I hate that. I feel tempted by this thing. So

Even though you haven’t given into that temptation, just the fact that you or being tempted thought about it or yeah, it’s been something put in front of you that you

Are enticed by. Oh, there was years that I would just pray. God, take away all these temptations. Make me a robot. I don’t want to be drawn by these things. I don’t want to be tempted by these things anymore. And so there’s this, and I believe a lot of Christians feel this way. There’s things that we’re tempted with and not everyone’s tempted with the same things always, but have you felt guilty? Have you felt shameful? Have you felt condemned just for the temptation, just for being tempted with something? Whatever, whatever sin you’ve struggled with, you’ve felt you’ve fallen into often enough to have it be part of your life, a pattern. Do you feel guilty just for the temptation alone? And here’s the revelation. If the temptation itself were sin, then Jesus was a sinner, but it’s not. And he wasn’t. He’s not a sinner. He was tempted and yet did not sin. There are two separate things. There’s the temptation and then there’s the giving into the temptation. There’s the walking in, the sin, in the flesh.

So your encouragement is for us to recognize that and to be able to separate those feelings of shame and guilt, like reserve those for the regret that when we do sin, not when we’re tempted not to wrap it all up in line.

I’ll say this, that regret, that guilt, that shame, that condemnation when you’re tempted isn’t coming from the Holy Spirit. Now, there might be a, we will talk about this in a little bit, a prompting the Holy Spirit of saying, Hey, don’t do this. Don’t walk in this. But the shame, the guilt, this is one of the tools that I believe the enemy uses is we feel tempted. We’re in that space of like, oh, I want to give in. And the enemy’s like, well, you’re already tempted. You might as well, you already feel the guilt. You already feel ashamed. Why don’t you just go for it? And he kind of pushes us over the edge. He tempts us even further in that. And so I just want to strengthen us and remind us that temptation is not sin. Giving into temptation is where the sin comes in. The sin is when we choose to indulge, when we choose to say yes to that thing we should be saying no to.

I had a verse that popped up into my mind and I had to find it, but I was reading one John yesterday, one John three 20. It says, for if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things, which I love because

It’s true. Because often our hearts condemn us

Well, and what you’re talking about that experience, that feeling of shame or guilt when you haven’t done anything wrong, you were just tempted by something and you kind of wrap it up into the same feelings as if you had sin. Our hearts condemn us and remind us of our weaknesses and all the other negative emotions that we feel in that moment. But I love that it said God is greater than our heart and knows all things, and he knows if we sinned or not. He knows that.

I mean, he’s the one judging our hearts. He knows, and we also, we know when we sin, when we choose to do something that we absolutely know we shouldn’t do, the Bible tells us that if someone knows the right thing to do and does not do it, that is sin. That is sin for that person. So we know when we choose wrongly, and this is why I think it’s so powerful and so important that Jesus is teaching us right now about asking God to lead us not into temptation, but to deliver us from that temptation. Because the powerful thing is that Jesus knows he understands it, which is so good. The second thing is that temptation itself isn’t sin, but it’s the thing that’s trying to get us to sin. It’s the draw to that fleshly desire. And then another thing I want everyone to listen to here is that God is not the one tempting us. He never is. And I can say this for a fact because James one verse 13 says this, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. So Jennifer, does God tempt you to sin? No. No. Did God tempt eve? No. To eat from the tree? No. God doesn’t tempt anyone to sin or to do evil,

Which I mean it makes sense because he’s pure and he’s holy and he’s perfect, and Jesus himself never sinned. So how could you tempt someone to do the thing that you never did? Does that make sense?

I think there’s a lot of believers that probably have this misconception that it’s God that brought them to this trial, this test of temptation.

We tell ourselves, we roll through thoughts of at least maybe it’s not that God tempted me with this, but why did you allow? What about that one?

God does? Because it says that Jesus was led to the wilderness to be tempted. God did not tempt Jesus, but he led him to this scenario, this season of his preparing so that testings and trials do come and God does test us, but he does not tempt us. God himself is not the one tempting us to sin. So we can trust that he won’t tempt us. We can trust him like, oh Lord, you are not the one tempting us.

James one 14 through 15 says, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it’s conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it’s fully grown, brings forth death.

So God doesn’t even need to tempt us.

It comes from within us out of what we already want.

This is another huge revelation that I had in my own life in trying to navigate this idea of how does temptation work? How does my flesh work? At what points am I making the wrong choices and leading to sin? And I read this in James, and it’s like each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. So let’s take an example here. Okay. Someone who has no problem with or addiction to smoking. So this is a pretty easy one to maybe someone listening right now smokes, no one ever has. It’s a pretty strong thing. It’s a very addictive, it’s very visual. It’s very tactile. It’s got taste. It’s got all the things to

Hit your

Senses to your senses, right? Yeah. So let’s say someone’s never had a problem or addiction to smoking, doesn’t like to smell, thinks it’s disgusting. You’re

Saying this person

Confident smoke. Yeah, they don’t smoke.

Got it. I thought you were saying, well,

We’ll get to that next.

Well, I know, but when you first started out, it sounded like you were saying, it sounded to me that you were saying someone who does smoke but doesn’t have an addiction to it. Oh, no,

No, no. They have an addiction. They, there’s someone that doesn’t, they’re not addicted. They don’t smoke. They don’t like the taste, they don’t like the smell. They don’t like the way it looks. They think it’s an ugly thing. That person’s never going to be tempted to smoke a cigarette. You could put a pack of cigarettes in front of them. You can hand them, you can light one, put it in their mouth and they’ll spit it out and be like, what are you doing? There’s no temptation there because

There’s no desire.

Yeah, there’s nothing inside them that wants that. But someone who has tasted it and has loved it has become addicted to it and maybe is trying to quit now, that person,

They will have the taste.

They smell it from a hundred feet away and they’re like, oh. And they remember

Triggers.

They see it in someone’s hands and mouth and they can feel it between their own fingers and between their lips and they want it. And this goes with almost any sin, anything.

So I have a question. Would you say that the more experience a person has in life, the more temptation that they have in life? Oh

Yeah, for

Sure. Never thought about that before.

So that we build these things in us, and so these passions come with us. So I want to take this to another deeper level, this idea of how temptations are already something within us. Because you can’t be tempted with something that you don’t want. You just cannot. If you hate eggplant, you will never be, you cannot tempt me with eggplant. Make

Me neither. Yeah,

That’s true. You can’t be like, Ooh, here’s this tasty eggplant casserole and be like, okay, I don’t want nothing to do with that. That looks disgusting. So let’s look at Jesus.

Sorry, you eggplant

Loving. Okay, this is going to blow some people’s minds. I think. Let’s look at Jesus. He was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. So if temptation comes from a desire that’s within us, then what was Jesus tempted with? He was tempted with what’s in his heart, what he actually wants. Luke chapter four, verse three. And the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. What was he tempted with?

Well, he was fasting at this point. So food,

He was hungry.

But would you say that also just that beginning portion of if you are the son of God, he was being tempted with who he is, like his identity.

Right. But the main temptation is make this bread. Yeah, he was challenging, but tempting him with the thing that he wanted the

Physical craving of. Yeah.

Okay. So he was hungry. Jesus desired food. We can clearly, we know that for sure. He was a man. Okay. So that’s the first thing. He was tempted with food. Luke four, verse six. And the devil said to him, all this authority I will give you and their glory for this has been delivered to me and I give it to whomever I want. I wish. Therefore, if you will worship before me, I will be yours. All will be yours or all will be yours. So the temptation isn’t to worship him.

It’s the authority.

It’s the authority. Guess what? Jesus wants

To rule

To rule, and he knows how to do it. Before he ascends into heaven, he says, all authority has been given to me. He knew who was going to give it to him. So he does have a desire for that authority, but only God’s way. And he was not tempted with worshiping Satan. He was tempted with the authority that Satan had, with the power that Satan had, because that’s what Jesus desired. But he knew how to get it the right way. He knew what his role was and what his purpose was. Let’s look at Luke four, verse nine. Then he brought him to Jerusalem, set him on the pinnacles of the temple and said to him, again, if you’re the son of God, throw yourself down from here. He’s on the pinnacle of Jerusalem and he’s looking at his city that he loves, and he’s being tempted again with this idea of, is God going to save me? Is God going to fulfill? Is God going to take care of these things that he does trust God in? And he knew it wasn’t his time, and so he’s being tempted with things that he already has in his heart.

What I don’t like about this last one is you can imagine the seed that was planted here with kind of this endangering yourself, like testing God, if you do this, will he protect you and save you is the seed of doubt and insecurity for what he’s going to be doing in just a short while being in the garden and wanting, I’m just wondering, I’m tying this into being in the garden. He’s a man. Do you think that he was tempted again in that same situation with, okay, if I’m going to do this and throw myself down, not from the pinnacle of the temple, but so to speak on the cross.

Well, does anyone’s flesh want to be to suffer? No. No. So the desire to not suffer does exist. Not suffer. Yeah. But he overcame the temptations in his flesh by walking in God’s spirit, by listening to God, by trusting God. So when it says Jesus was tempted, he was tempted by desires that he has inside of him that otherwise he couldn’t tempt Jesus. He was hungry. He wanted all the authority that God has promised him. He wants those things. He desires what God has for him. So it’s a pretty powerful thing to realize that Jesus was tempted just like we are, and that temptations come from within us, and that should be something that as believers, we should peripherally evaluate in our own hearts is like, okay, Lord, here’s the things that I am tempted by. Why? What is that in me that I’m looking for? What am I trying? What does my flesh want and why does it want it?

So Jesus, new temptation, he experienced that on earth and he can understand what our flesh encounters with temptation. So we were talking about how in this example of prayer in Matthew from him, it’s a petition to not even let us be in a position where we’re vulnerable to temptation. It’s a heart cry for protection,

Right? Well, like we said, fully aware of how hard temptation can be and everyone listening knows exactly the things that they’re tempted by. And when they’re in the midst of that temptation, how hard that is. So it reminds me of, I was just reading Proverbs seven the other day and it’s, it’s a letter to a son saying is my son, listen to my words. This father is just like Jesus is praying for us. Pray that we don’t get let in temptation. He’s writing this proverb is being written to son, saying, listen to my words and don’t fall into this trap. Don’t do this. It says verse six through eight, for at the window of my house, I have looked out through my lattice and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense passing along the street near her corner, taking the road to her house, and he’s talking about a prostitute and he’s saying he’s going on this road, he’s on a road. So the road is not sinful. The path is not sinful. The walking a direction is not sinful, but he knows what is on it. He knows who lives. At the end of it, he knows where he’s going to go. And this is the father’s cry to his son in Proverbs seven is Don’t be like that young man, that simple-minded, non unwise, lacking sense. Don’t go on that road.

Don’t put yourself in a situation where you know will be tempted.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. There’s times that we have this way in us, we’re like, I am not going to give in, but I just want to go walk down that street. And we think that we’re somehow stronger than a temptation, but at the same time, we’re desiring to be tempted, which is not how we should be walking. We should avoid that street altogether.

Isn’t there a verse that says that sin is crouching out the door?

Yeah. This is what God tells Kane. That’s right. Right before he goes to kill Abel.

But if we turn it around a little bit, how often are we ourselves crouching up to sins door? We’re like, let’s see how far we can get.

Let’s peek. Let’s get close to the line. And this is what Eve did. Eve. She’s told by God, don’t eat of the tree knowledge, the tree of knowledge of G Nivo.

Well, right. Adam was told.

Adam was told, okay, Adam

Conveyed the message. We think maybe God told her. What is

She doing? Doesn’t say that. Walking up to the tree like, oh, oh, this is the tree that God doesn’t want me to eat. Okay, but it looks so nice.

She should have been on the other side of the garden eating eggplant.

And then guess where the serpent, sorry, I didn’t make jokes. I know. Yeah. Eggplants gross. Maybe that was the fruit on the tree. Where is Satan at? Right there at the tree right there, ready to encourage that temptation. She was already tempted. She was over by the tree. She was furious, she was interested, and then now she’s being tempted by the devil, the serpent, that ancient serpents.

It’s like she put herself in its hands, like right there.

Yeah, she could have been, if she wasn’t anywhere near it, that ser wouldn’t have been able to say, well, look how good it’s going to taste and look how good it’s going to. She’s like, whatcha talking about? That’s way over there.

So don’t walk sense. Don’t do that.

Yeah. I think we tend to give too much credit to the enemy.

It’s all his fault for Yeah, he did this tempting us or making us sin.

That’s like saying that the serpent led by the hand eve over to the tree, but he doesn’t do that. He’s very cunning. The Bible says he’s been around a lot longer than we have, but we play

A role,

But we play a role because there’s desires that are inside of us, and he’s just really good at knowing how to trigger those and to get those. And so it’s why the Bible over and over and over again encourages us on how we should be walking and how we should be avoiding certain things and not it’s for protection for us. And Jesus is even praying this Lord lead us not into temptation but deliver us. So don’t even lead me to a place that I might be tempted and also deliver me from evil and from temptation and strengthen me to be able to rise above that which scriptures clearly tell us He does.

I think it’s really good too that, I mean obviously he put the most important things in this example of prayer in Matthew for our sake so that we would put our minds to it. He didn’t just say, pray for daily bread and that you have providence and you’re being taken care of. He says very specifically to, he wants us to be paying attention that there are temptations out there, that there is an evil one. And I think that it is crucial that we as believers are paying attention that we’re praying for these things. Yeah.

I want to read some scriptures that encourage us in this whole idea of temptation and how we should and can be walking. So first Peter five, eight, it says, be sober minded, be watchful. Like you were just saying, your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring line seeking someone to devour. When you put yourself in the wrong place at the right time, when you allow yourself to walk down the street that leads to the prostitute. When you put yourself right in front of the thing that you have vowed not to touch is bad for you, and you’re like, well, I’m just going to get close. This is where the devil is seeking to devour someone. He’s ready to pounce. We’re not walking sober mindedly. We’re not being watchful. We’re acting as if we don’t have an adversary and we’re pretending like we’re strong in our flesh. We’re like, let’s go in our flesh close to that thing that our flesh desires and then tell ourselves that we’re going to be strong in our flesh to not give into that thing that our flesh wants.

Well, but the cool thing is, even in the midst of lacking sense and being lured into temptation, we have to remember that we’re not abandoned, that the Lord still provides for us

Even in those moments because

He knows that we’re weak and that we need help. In one Corinthians 10 13, it says, no temptation is overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with every temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

So think the meaning of this. This was a huge revelation for me in my walk with purity and certain things that I’ve struggled with is recognizing that this isn’t true. For some people, this isn’t just true. For those, it’s universal super Christians is that they never sin, and you just think that that’s true. But this is true for every believer. It says, no temptation is overtaken you. That is not common to man, which means the temptations you’re experiencing that you think are so strong, so powerful, impossible to escape, that’s common to man. It’s not uncommon you don’t have some sort of special temptation,

Which means that it was also common to Jesus because it says that he can sympathize with our weaknesses and that he was also tempted in the same

Ways. And then it says, God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. What that means,

You can say no, you can overcome it. You can

Every time escape that God provides a way of escape with every temptation. We may not like the way of escape. We may not want to escape, but he does. He

Provides it. So would you say that for some people seeing that way of escape, understanding that way of escape is easier or you have spiritual eyes for it, the more you do something or how does it work?

From my experience, it’s something that you become more sensitive to because when we walk in certain sins, certain unrepentant sins, we have this thing over here that we haven’t dealt with. We can become numb to hearing the voice of God in that situation with those things because we’ve said no to his prompting over and over and over again in that situation. It’s not that he’s never said it, because we know right here he makes a wave of skin. Every time his Holy Spirit speaks to us, he convicts us. He reminds us of the truth, and he does that every time because faithful. So I think we get numb to listening and we don’t hear it as well, but I think as we practice listening, that voice gets more prominent in our life. It becomes harder to not hear it, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Okay. So I also wanted to look at some scriptures that talk about deliverance because part of this verse in Matthew also talks about delivering us from the evil one. So Isaiah 43, 2 says, when you pass through the waters, I, I’ll be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume You.

Reminds me of the Edrick, Meshach and Bendigo.

Yeah, for sure. I thought the same thing, but I also thought when it says, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Even that reminds me of the first Corinthians verse we just read, where when you’re going through hard things or there is temptation to sin, we can be at a point where we’re not overwhelmed by those things, whether it’s a challenge or

It’s as we abide in Christ, the closer in proximity we are to him relationally and trusting him and understanding him and knowing him I think makes it easier to rise up underneath those temptations, but also makes it easier to avoid them, to make choices sooner. Be like, I’m not even going to go down that road. I’m going to take this longer route to get to where I’m going.

Another one is two Timothy four 18. It says, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deeded and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever, never. Amen.

Yeah, it’s hard to hear these things because there’s a lot of people that lots of evil things happen to them, but his rescue is sometimes immediate in the midst of these things. There’s in the midst of temptations, in the midst of, no, I want to say in the midst of temptations, he’s always provides a way of escape what we just talked about. But

Sometimes things are being done, things

Happening to us. Sometimes he immediately stops and protects and sometimes they don’t. He doesn’t. But in the big picture, in eternity he does, and this is how many people, so martyrs often are martyred, and they would be saved if they would only deny Christ if they would only change their position on what they believe. If they would only say with their mouth that they renounce their faith, they’d be saved. But being delivered in that scenario is not necessarily being delivered from the physical. It’s that Jesus is with them in that moment and that the reason they can say strong in their faith is because of who he is and not because of who they are. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s really good. And if you look at the wording, the word choice here, it’s referring to the future. It’s something that will happen me safely. And so this is something that we can rest in hope, hopefulness. So whether or not he rescues you in the very moment of something evil being done to you or what you’re experiencing, it says that the Lord will rescue and bring safely into his heavenly kingdom. That’s a future tense. So it’s something that we can look forward to no matter what our circumstances are or what we’re looking forward to or what we’re going through, we can look forward to him fulfilling this promise.

And I think this is a huge thing for a lot of believers because so we’re talking about being temptation, which is like it’s the steps leading up to sin, and then there’s the sin, and then there’s afterwards, after you said, first and foremost, if you’ve been listening to any of our episodes, and if you’ve listened to our podcast at all, you would know that we believe the gospel and the gospel. The good news is that though you are a sinner, you are saved in Christ Jesus. Though you have sinned, you are forgiven in Christ Jesus and that all sins past, present, and future have been paid for and forgiven on the cross. So not only has God dealt with your sin completely in Jesus Christ, but he’s also now provided a way of not walking into sin and not continuing in sin. So he’s dealt with the leading up to, he’s dealt with the doing, and he’s dealt with the aftermath, the shame and the guilt and the condemnation.

(33:20)
He’s dealt with every aspect of sin in our life. And then I’ve been teaching through revelation for the last three years in church and coming up to the chapters in Revelation where God is going to not just, he hasn’t just dealt with it in us. He’s going to actually deal with sin itself. Like you mentioned in Genesis, when sin is crouching and wanting to get Cain sin itself, whatever, however that is, I don’t know. I don’t know what this is, but there’s, sin is a thing God is going to throw into the lake of fire with death. So sin and the consequences of sin, which is death, both of them will be cast in the lake of fire forever. So currently sins in the world, but God’s dealt with it in every aspect. And then finally at the end, he’s going to deal with it holy and it’s going to be gone destroyed.

(34:14)
It will no longer have any effect on man, which is something we can look forward to. So this prayer, it’s not just lead us not to temptation like Lord, protect me from the road of temptation. Keep me from it, open my eyes to it, help me walk around it, help me see it when it’s coming. Help me understand how I’m tempted and how these desires of me. That’s the prayer is make me aware, make me sober minded, help me see, but it’s also and deliver me from evil. It’s also deliver me from the consequences of the sin. Deliver me from the ones who would want to sin against me, deliver me from the shame and the guilt and the condemnation. Save me from that Lord. And I love that about God, that he didn’t just forgive us and be like, oh, now good luck. That’s not good news.

(35:05)
If you live a life and you’re like, yeah, I’m saved in one day, it’ll be great. And right now everything’s the same. Nothing’s changed, and I feel trapped, and I feel burdened, and I feel shameful, and I feel guilty, and I feel condemned, and I can’t change, and I keep doing the thing I don’t want to do. That’s not the gospel. That’s not good news. The good news is the gospel not only dealt with the consequences of sin, but it also dealt with the reason why we sin. And it’s also dealing with what leads us to sin. Again, not that we’re going to be perfect here, the Bible makes that very clear, but God’s given us away to walk with him and to receive from him and to be helped by him and to be guided by him. Amen.

Yeah. And I think that the way that we do this is through praying and praying about our sin and praying about our temptations, and praying about our desire for deliverance like this is

Which grows our sensitivity to hear in the Spirit and yeah, prayer.

Which speaking of we wanted to answer the question, what is the power of prayer? The power of prayer is that we rely on God every single day to help us, like Aaron said, navigate life and to know that he is our sustenance and protection. He is the one. And we’re reliant upon that. We cannot provide that for ourselves.

We had a quote in the beginning of our book saying that prayer is more than just words. It’s that it’s our breath, it’s heartbeat, it’s our heartbeat. Prayer is how we commune with God. We connect with him.

Yeah. Speaking of connecting with him, the power of prayer is also that we get to enter the throne room of grace, acknowledging the access that we have to our creator despite our sin, because Christ paid that ransom for us so that we can stand before him. And like you said, which is good news, that kind of power transforms a person when we recognize how big he is, how small we are, how much he can give, how lacking we are,

And the importance of the Lord’s prayer in general. This big idea which we’ve been getting to over the last eight episodes as he teaches his disciples and teaches us that prayer is essential for a believer that we can trust God and that to help focus on the things that we should be praying for. He’s exploding the picture of you once thought prayer was this, but now see what it is.

And as we practice prayer, as we practice humbling ourselves before the Lord, he transforms us. And it’s a beautiful thing when we submit to him our decision-making and the way that we walk, because we’re in close relationship with him. It pleases him and our relationship with him grows deeper, wider, bolder.

Totally. And that’s our hope for everyone listening is that this would be a true mark of our marriages, is that we’d be praying with each other and for each other, that word prayer warrior, it’s like that we use prayer as our first line of defense, that it’s our offense, that it’s our defense, that it’s everything that we would know God and that we would pursue him in our prayer life together and see him do amazing things in us, in our marriages.

Amen. Speaking of marriages, we just want to encourage you guys to be praying in your marriages. We live in a time where marriage is under attack and we all go through hard things, and we like mentioned that reliance upon the Lord for every single part of everything, our life and especially our marriage relationship, we have got to be lifting these things up to the Lord. And so that’s one of the reasons we wrote the marriage gift. It’s a daily devotional journey to inspire, encourage, and transform you guys in your prayer life. It’s 365 prayers written out for you to be inspired to be praying.

I dare your marriage to do this for one year straight. That so awesome. See what happens. See what happens.

So at the end of this series that we’ve been doing, we’ve been sharing prayers from the marriage gift instead of the ways that we’ve been praying. Episode. Yeah. We

Usually write unique ones, but we’re doing ones straight from our book.

So today’s is the very last 1, 365, and it’s titled The Marriage Gift. Dear Lord, thank you for our love story and for the days ahead that you are writing for us. Thank you for the times we have struggled in our relationship as well as for the victories we have celebrated. We are deeply grateful for the gift of prayer and the ability you have given to us to pray continually for our marriage. Thank you for teaching us how to humbly bring our thanksgiving and request to you. As we submit to you in prayer, please help us hear your voice clearly when you respond and when you lead us through every circumstance. May we continually believe our marriage is extraordinary, that the purpose you have for our relationship is extraordinary, and that the gift of praying together is extraordinary. Give us eyes to see how each of us affects the oneness we experience. Please help our hearts understand the influence we have in each other’s lives. Make us confident in knowing that you purposed our marriage to have a positive impact in this world. In Jesus’ name, mature our marriage by stimulating growth in areas of our lives that you are refining. Urge us to cling to one another every day and embrace closeness. We yearn for you to use us as vessels of your glory and grace, sharing your love and testimony wherever we go, and in all that we do, in Jesus name, amen.