We will all be tempted to do wrong ,no one will escape that,it is W Barclay who writes on ,The Defence against temptation'.He tells how President Garfield was once urged to take a profitable, but dishonourable course of action. It was said,'' No one will ever know'', His answer was,''President Garfield will know- and I've got to sleep with him.'' How true , there are some things in my life I've done ,and I still remember them with regret.That is one aspect of defending ourselves against temptation,another is to not put ourselves in the way of temptation,the Lord's prayer touches on that ,in the words.'Lead us not into tempatation,' but deliver us from all evil ', some translations have,' deliver us from the evil one'.(Matthew 6 v 13) Left to our own devices we can so easy put ourselves in the way of temptation,let us always be aware of our weaknesses , in praying those words we are acknowledging our dependence on God to deliver us from all evil which includes the evil one.Yes there is evil within us,a fallen nature that we have to be always aware of.The other is the evil one the devil, who will always be seeking to take advantage of us,to lure us into evil which comes to us in many different ways. We must remembe that we will always be in a spiritual battle,as Michael Green writes,' Jesus well aware of this, bids us to daily seek the Fathers strength to be delivered from the seductions of the svil one,' that includes the evil of our own hearts.
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