"Lead us not into temptation." Jesus taught us to pray these words as part of the Lord's prayer. But what is temptation, and what exactly are we meant to pray for here? Most of the time we think of temptation as an internal struggle caused by two conflicting desires. We want to do something, and we also don't want to do it. Or as Paul describes it in the letter to the Ro-mans: I do not under-stand my own actions. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15, 19) In other words, we think of temptation first of all as a struggle between right or wrong conduct. And that is certainly one aspect of it. But the more hurtful aspect of temptation is faulty thinking, or what Martin Luther called "false belief and despair".

When I worked with troubled youth at the YES house in Wyoming, I  could see first hand how much pain and heartache come from faulty thinking. I met young people who have never been loved properly and who have therefore, understandably, developed a conviction that they are unlovable and without any worth. Then they covered up this great vulnerability with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and a notion that the rules which apply to other people somehow do not apply to them.

Such faulty thinking exists to some degree in all of us. God's first word to us is an unconditional YES. We are God's beloved children; we are loved unconditionally; we are precious beyond measure. And the greatest temptation is to somehow doubt this: to doubt our worthiness, and to doubt God's unconditional love for us.

Faulty thinking often holds us back from being engaged in actions for peace and justice. We are overwhelmed by the task at hand, we see a whole world in pain, and we try to rely on our own strength, we overlook the little which we can actu-ally contribute, and so we give up.

But why would God lead us into such a temptations? Martin Luther, in his explanation of this petition, categorically states: "God tempts no one". And then he goes on to say: "God tempts no one, but we ask in this prayer that God would preserve and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sin, and that, although we may be at-tacked by them, we may finally prevail and gain the victory." (From Martin Luther's explanation of the Lord's Prayer in the Small Catechism).

May you have a holy Lent, and may God strengthen you in your trials and give you peace.

Pastor Bea Chun