Contending – Luke 11:1-4
The biblical narrative offers us a brief depiction of a malevolent being hellbent on our suffering; It suggests that chaos has been planned, disease sown, and violence cultivated. Our response to this darkness is not to cower or shrink back but to become people of prayer and action, injecting love into the darkness.
“To lead us not into temptation and deliver us from the evil one”– is to request that God might rescue us from the darkness within ourselves and outside ourselves.
“Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil” – Eugene Peterson
The shockingly simple observation of this prayer is that we live in a warzone– a conflict our souls testify to.
“In Rwanda, I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him.”–Roméo Dallaire
The Biblical Cosmology
The scriptures propose that all the evil we encounter in our world is either a direct initiative or a painful ripple of the disorder introduced by the Evil One in the garden.
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.” –Luke 4:1–2.
The temptation Jesus faced was subtle in nature.
“Nobody believed he was real. . . . That was his power. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”—Keyser Söze
The subtle touch of the Evil one.
For as much as we like to think of ourselves as rational and independent beings, we are all shaped by powers small as microscopic biochemicals and as large as inherited notions of gender roles and stereotypes.
Contending with the Darkness
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” – Ephesians 6:12
“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”– Jude 3
“Fight the good fight of the faith.” –1 Timothy 6:12.
“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.” –1 Peter 5:8–9.
We pray and act.
Let’s abandon the false dichotomy between prayer and action. We can be a community of prayer, gospel, and justice. Prayer and action–held together.
“The Christian story dares us to believe that the work of prayer is not so far away from the gift of sewers, that hands lifted in prayer and the scientific commendation of hand-washing flow from a shared source. Our work of prayer participates in and propels our public work of restoration.” – Tish Harrison Warren
“By giving us this prayer, then, Jesus invites us to walk ahead into the darkness and discover that it, too, belongs to God. –Tom Wright
In Praying, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One” we are reminded that we are in the midst of a conflict but a conflict that has already been decided.
Learning to contend in prayer–
Learn to pray with your body.
Learn to pray with your emotions.
“To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.”― Karl Barth
