We had a Latin teacher with a strange sense of humour; he used to promise the fresh faced first years a ‘treat’ the next day but great was their disappointment and anguish when they found out his idea of a ‘treat’ was a ‘test’ to anyone else, or even a trial and sometimes a temptation to cheat or to report sick or to black despair Well, the word ‘treat’ ought always to mean something enjoyable but the word ‘test’ can mean different things: pressure out on us from outside, to show what we are like; or the inner urges, ‘dark passions’ which bubble up and also show what we are like, (and we don’t like that) One way of looking at this is to understand that God permits trials to confirm us, strengthen us the Devil and our own evil desires promote temptations to confound us. one Greek word used for both ‘trial’ and ‘temptation’, which both mean testing James is saying both that we are to rejoice in our testing trials which can strengthen us 1.2-4 Consider it pure joy, ... whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance . Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. and that we are to resist our inner tendencies which will trap us in sin. 1.13 ‘ each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death’ We cannot, therefore blame God for our inner temptations, nor should we put it all on the devil, the big question in trials & temptations is always how do we respond? As Selwyn Hughes comments on this passage: It is time we stopped blaming God for our difficulties and faced up to the fact that it is not what happens to us that is important but how we respond to it. Our responses are our own responsibility. Until we learn this we will remain immature personalities and fail to grow up’ Sadly, are we not now part of a blame and compensation culture where we want an easy life and if it is not easy it is always someone else’s fault and somebody else must sort it out?

Take time, sometime and read through the whole story of Job a man who goes through extreme trouble and tragedy trials which God permits but Satan promotes probing and testing Job in every sort of way he loses his children, he loses his wealth, he loses his health: the test is, will Job curse God? Job curses the day he was born, so deep is his despair he rejects the superficial religious platitudes of his ‘comforters’ but he does not curse God. It is not that he ever gets a complete answer to why he has suffered. not that his reactions are always perfect, but the story is a moving description of someone’s response to trials that God has permitted and temptations that the devil promotes. In the end Job comes through to a deeper faith, tested/tempted under pressure

But you say to me: I’m not Job, I’m just an ordinary person, the only way I feel I can deal with temptation is by giving into it. How can I cope? How can I be responsible for my life and my actions? The answer can be found in some of the small words in ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ We need to remember that just as this prayer is for all Christians - it speaks of ‘us’ and ‘we’ and ‘our’ rather than ‘me’ and ‘I’ and ‘mine’ - so trials and temptations are the common experience of all of us. It is simply a mistake, perhaps even a comforting lie, to think that nobody else has ever had the trouble that I have had, nobody else has ever had to cope with this pressure, nobody else was under such temptation. What did Paul write to the Corinthians? (1 Corinthians 10.12-13) ‘No temptation has seized you except what is common to all humans.’ None of us is the first to have had the difficult experience that in pride or despair we thought was unique. Nor is there any trial so extreme that there is no relief. ‘And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out, so that you can stand up under it.’

This brings us to the second little word ‘into’ We are all exposed to temptations but that does mean that we have to entertain them. There is a difference between being subjected to temptation (which happened even to Jesus) and being sucked into temptation. When a temptation flashes up on the computer screen of our mind the crucial point is not that it is there but what you will do with it. You have a choice to press the enter button and let it become part of you, fully programmed in or you can press escape or exit and get out of it. It is a lie that we are locked into temptation and cannot resist it. That only happens when we choose to enter it or entertain it. As Martin Luther said: I cannot stop birds flying over my head but I can stop them making nests in my hair.

To pray ‘lead us not into temptation is not to pray for a quiet life with no problems, it is to pray for endurance in our trials (as James writes) it is to recognise that we cannot endure on our own, we need God’s help and God will help us when we look for the way out -- he is faithful; and it is to pray that although we will be exposed to evil in this world we shall not be enticed into evil; we shall instead be delivered through the saving power of Jesus Christ.

Take for example, an alcoholic who has to walk past a pub each day on his way home from work. There is no other route, there is a temptation, he feels a craving. The question is, will he consent to the temptation by actually going in and be drawn into an environment where the pressure grows. Or as happened to me one night last summer when the rest of my family were away, (and being alone is a prime time for some temptations) I was ‘grazing’ with the device for changing TV channels and found a satellite channel, which I at first wondered if it was comedy it seemed so was so grotesque, but soon I realised it was serious, a soft porn channel. By the grace of God, I found the way out, the off switch.

But there are more temptations than sex and booze: take almost any current news item about corruption in our public life; the banks, beef industry, planning decisions, gazumping, we hear about some glaring injustice, how do we react? Do we press an enter button of bitter anger? Cynical indifference? Self righteous complacency that I wouldn’t do that. Or would I? Or do we seek a way out in contrite prayer and loving concern?

Remembrance Sunday reminds me of people I know sorely touched and tempted/tested by the Enniskillen bomb 11 years ago. There’s Ronnie Hill in a coma and his wife Noreen patiently waiting and watching and caring and living out a loving attitude towards the bombers. This sore test has made them better not bitter, but I can think of others I will not name who seem to be trapped by what has happened so that their pain becomes misery. and this undoubtedly painful trial goes to make them bitter.

Day by day, you and I will face trial and temptation; it’s part of our human existence, whether it be as trivial as a traffic jam to raise our blood pressure or a serious illness, or a disappointment, or ill treatment for the name of Christ or pressure inside us to react in an unChristlike way.

That’s why we need this part of the Lord’s prayer with the assurance that God is faithful and will show us the way out.

Lift up before God now people you know under pressure that they will be strengthened rather than crushed.

Bring before God those pressure points of your own life where you need to see the way of escape.

Lord, help us to be honest with you and with ourselves; may we accept the responsibility for our failures and find your grace that we may change.

Be strong and of good courage for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

SOME NOTES AVAILABLE AFTER SERVICE Shorter Catechism (modern version) 106 In the sixth request (Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil) we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when tempted.

He who offers this prayer must keep a sleepless watch over his thoughts. He must beware of those times and places and states of mind in which evil thoughts intrude themselves. And he will soon learn by experience that a vacant mind and an idle life is a very door of temptation. A busy life, by God’s blessing is a safe life. Curiosity concerning evil and forbidden things is a cause of many temptations assailing the soul. It is impossible to quench such curiosity in a human heart; and unhappily, once learned, the knowledge of sin is a knowledge that is never forgotten. Times of reaction also, times of isolation and mental depression, are often times when it is most difficult to keep temptation out of the heart. Loneliness, also, supplies a vantage ground to temptation. Alexander White

It is time we stopped blaming God for our difficulties and faced up to the that it is not what happens to us that is important but how we respond to it. Our responses are our own responsibility. Until we learn this we will remain immature personalities and fail to grow up’ Selwyn Hughes

God permits trials to confirm us, strengthen us the Devil and our own evil desires promote temptations to confound us.

Note on deliver us from evil: literally = deliver us from the evil The Greek is ambiguous as to whether this is personal, ‘the evil one’ or impersonal ‘the evil thing’. It is probably best to take it in both senses: both the effects of evil (in which we also are implicated) and the devil as the agent of evil.

We cry out to the Father: lead me through all the evil tendencies of my heart. Help me to overcome the temptations of my temperament. Change inside me the evil tendencies of my personality as it relates to other people. Protect me from the temptations of my own age group in the phases of life: passionate when young, cynical when middle aged, self pitying when old and lonely. Save me from the temptations of our culture, the modern world in which we live. For in all these realms and above all to my own sinful heart I am seducible James Houston