“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today 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 the evil one.’

- Matthew 6:9-13

The Bible is clear that God does not tempt anyone - he never intends evil or invites evil (James 1:13-15). But the Scriptures are equally clear that God does lead his people into places of testing. Moses reminds Israel in Deuteronomy that God led them through the wilderness to probe what was in their hearts. The Spirit leads Jesus himself into the desert. Not every time of tempting or testing leads to evil, and not all times in the wilderness is punishment.

Think of what it takes for a child to mature: resistance, failure, challenge. We even put them through examinations. Those examinations aren’t intended to hurt them - they’re important because you can attend the lessons and you can do the homework. Still, in the end, the examination will reveal what we have learnt - not least to ourselves.

One of the great idols of our age is comfort. We can come to believe that a good life is a frictionless life and even that God's role is to provide one. But people formed in frictionless lives are not resilient people. If you were to look back at your own story, my hunch is that the times of deepest growth were not the easy ones. In the time of testing, our character is unveiled. We discover both our weaknesses and what God can do in spite of them.

So we pray lead us not into temptation - not because testing is always to be avoided, but because we know our own fragility. And we pray deliver us from evil because we know that in the wilderness there is an adversary who would use the test to destroy rather than to form us.

The one we pray to has been in the wilderness himself. He knows the weight of it. And if he led us there, he will lead us out.

"'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today 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 the evil one.'"
— Matthew 6:9-13

Remember Wonga? Borrow a couple of hundred pounds on Monday to cover a gas bill, pay it back on Friday. Fine. Miss the payment, though, and the interest — running at thousands of per cent APR — gets going. People were buried under debt many times the original loan.

Debt has been normalised for us. We borrow to buy homes, to get through university, to buy cars. In Jesus' day, debt could cost you your freedom — you could become the property of whoever held your debt. So when the Jews seized Jerusalem around 30 years after Jesus, the first thing they did was find the records of borrowing and lending and burn them.

That's the weight behind the word when Jesus puts it in the prayer. The language of debt is a metaphor for the burden of sin. So what is it that we owe to God?

Some people can't really pray this line because they don't think there's much wrong with them. Mistakes, yes. But mistakes can be explained and corrected. They don't need forgiving.

Others don't need convincing that they're sinful. They know the weight. The problem isn't awareness of sin, but that no one seems able to help.

One won't accept the problem. The other has given up on a solution.

David, in Psalm 51, wrote: Against you, you only, have I sinned. What about Bathsheba, Uriah, the child, or the army commander he dragged into the whole awful plot? But David isn't doing a celebrity non-apology. He is recognising that human beings are made in the image of God, so any wrong done to a person is ultimately an offence against their Creator. The spiritual debt — David's, mine, yours — is owed to the One whose beloved children have been harmed.

The good news is that someone else has settled our debt. The weight carried, the stain cleaned, the legal charge cancelled — nailed to the cross, as Paul puts it in Colossians.

There's just one thing.

As we also have forgiven our debtors.

Twenty years ago, a man entered an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, took ten young girls hostage and shot them. Six died. That same afternoon, Amish neighbours visited the killer's family to offer them comfort! At the murderer's burial, the Amish outnumbered non-Amish.

Forgiveness isn't a one-time transaction. It's a way of life. We can't be in two places at once — receiving forgiveness for ourselves and refusing it for others. That's not a trade. It's about the posture of our hearts.

The journey of forgiveness may be long. But it's the journey the prayer calls us to take.

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

I love how the Lord’s Prayer anchors us in a specific time and place. Jesus, a real person who ate literal bread as a daily staple, taught his followers to pray for their daily bread. This speaks to God’s provision; He meets our physical needs.

Sadly, many stop there. After Jesus miraculously fed the five thousand, the crowd tried to force Him to be their king. But Jesus stopped them, explaining that physical bread is temporary. While it fills a stomach today, you will always hunger again. He wanted them to see that He is the true bread from heaven, sent to satisfy our deepest, eternal hunger.

This is a challenging teaching for the church. We often treat Jesus like a checklist for our daily needs while keeping Him at arm's length. We resist internalizing Him as the Bread of Life, often neglecting to "eat His word" by reading the Bible.

Similarly, we excel at providing social support; offering youth drop-ins, language classes, and community events. These are good, necessary things. However, a problem arises when we become so satisfied with the community aspect of church or with doing good deeds that we no longer hunger deeply for Jesus Himself. We must desire a true relationship with the Word of God, both for ourselves and for our communities.

My prayer is that your love, knowledge, and understanding will grow; that you will choose what is truly good and live purely for Christ. Ultimately, may you choose to eat the one food that truly matters for the rest of your life: the Bread of Life.