Does God ever deliberately “lead us into temptation”? If not, why would we ask God not to? Why would we pray to God that way in the Lord’s Prayer?
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Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog…a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here’s this week’s entry…
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Question: Dear Neale: I am a senior citizen (75) and have thoroughly enjoyed the CWG books. Most, if not all, Christian Churches say the Lord’s Prayer. I said it for years without much thought, but in recent years “Lead us not into temptation” has bothered me. Why would God “lead us” into temptation? And, is the “Lord’s Prayer” really the Lord’s prayer? Clyde, Bridgeport, NY.
Neale’s Response: Dear Clyde, Interesting questions. The answer is that God would not lead us into temptation. We are not praying to God to stop doing bad things to us…like leading us into temptation. I believe that the thrust of the line, the gist of the line, from the prayer is: “God, please don’t let us be led into temptation.”
Granted, it is not worded that way, but I believe most people understand it to mean that, and I think Jesus’ followers understood it to mean that as well, if, indeed, it was translated correctly to begin with.
As to your second question, I think it is a very good prayer. And every prayer is “the Lord’s prayer,” because every prayer is a communication with God, and there is no wrong way to do that. So all prayers are the Lord’s!
A statement from Conversations with God that will change your life is the almost off-handed comment in the dialogue that everything you think, say and do is a prayer. Praying is not something we do at certain times, like when we are on our knees in church, or holding hands at the dinner table. It is something we are doing always.
Let me repeat that.
We are always praying.
Everything we think is a prayer. Everything we say is a prayer. Everything we do is a prayer. The prob¬lem is, we just don’t know it. We think we are praying only when we are actually, consciously engaging in the activity we call “prayer.” But here is a great secret. @INTRO = God calls everything prayer.
How can this be so? Why is it the way it is?
CWG says that we are all creative beings, made in the image and likeness of God. Since God is the creator, so, too, are we. God has given us tools of creation, and they are three: thought, word and deed.
What you think, you create. What you say, you produce. What you do, you call forth more of. This is perhaps the most important single remembrance in Conversations with God. We’ve all heard this before, so it is certainly nothing new. But the way it is explained in CWG brings it home with new emphasis.
What the dialogue is telling us is that there is no time when the creation machine is “off.” The process of creation goes on forever, and there is no time when it is not engaged. Think of God as a great big Xerox machine. Whatever you put in is duplicated. And you are never not putting something in.
That’s the key. That’s the real revelation. There is no time when you are not creating. There is no time when you are not praying. If “prayer” is the mes¬sage you are sending to God, you are praying every minute of the day, for your message to God is your life, lived. And that message, that prayer, will be sent back to you, just as you send it out. God doesn’t make any changes. God sends back to you, enlarged and multi¬plied, what you send God. Isn’t that incredible?
Well, it is if you’re sending “good stuff,” and it’s not if you’re sending “bad stuff.” So stop sending bad stuff! Rid yourself of your negative thoughts, speak not again a single negative word, and don’t do, ever, that which you do not wish done to you. For what you do unto others will be done unto you–you can count on it.
So from now on, don’t imagine that you are limiting your praying to those few moments during the day or week when you actually intend to talk to God. Notice that your whole life is a conversation with God. If that doesn’t change the thoughts you allow yourself to entertain, the words you allow to escape from your lips, and the things you allow yourself to do, nothing will.
Yet if you do change these things, you will find that your entire life will have changed, for the very prayers you have sent out will have produced the answers for which you have waited.
(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale’s personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there and publishes it in this blog.)