A Short Prayer to Help You Avoid Trouble (Updated)

How often do you pray that God would help you avoid trouble? I think that we can mess up simply by failing to pray this prayer. Jesus in His teaching on prayer encouraged His disciples to pray, “Lead me not into temptation.” I didn’t think too much of this until hearing Roger Stacy, one of my heroes in ministry, speak about this verse. He brought out the idea that by praying this prayer we are able to avoid needless temptation in our lives. It is easy to pray, “God, give me strength when tempted.” Maybe we should be praying to avoid the temptation in the first place. He is a couple benefits:

1. God has the power to help us avoid certain tempting situations.

Maybe there are situations that you can avoid by living a life of prayer. Paul encourages us to keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5). Maybe we can avoid certain opportunities to sin that way. In Luke 17 Jesus tells us that temptation will come, but He does say how much. I think I would like as little as possible please. Thank you very much!

2. It puts us in a right attitude about ourselves.

By praying and asking God to help me avoid temptation it reminds me of my own human frailty. One of the saying that we use at my house is, “There but for the grace of God go I.” We are all prone to make mistakes. That is why the story that Jesus tells about the Pharisee and the other man’s prayer is so powerful. The sinner’s prayer was, “Have mercy on me a sinner.” That simple prayer was heard because it was prayed with the right attitude. It is an attitude that all of us need.

Maybe a short prayer for you today and everyday is, “Lead me not into temptation.”

If you liked this you might also like: 5 Surprising Results of Not Praying

5 Surprising Results of Not Praying

These things may be surprising but they are each a result of not building your prayer life:

1. You will not appear as smart.

James says that if we lack wisdom we should ask God for wisdom and He will give it. The reverse of that is that if we don’t ask for wisdom we may not get the insight we need. Are we not getting the benefits of asking for wisdom?

2. You have to overcome more temptation than needed.

This may seem surprising, but it seems clear from Jesus’ teaching on prayer. He encourages his disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” This would imply that if we don’t pray that we may face more temptation than if we had. I think I will pass on unneeded temptation, thank you very much!

3. You have less of the things that you need in life.

With the same teaching on prayer about temptation Jesus teaches them to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” As Mark Batterson says, “The greatest tragedies in life are the prayers that go unanswered because they go unasked.” We shouldn’t miss out by not asking.

4. Your life will be more boring.

Again this may be surprising but true prayer helps to prevent boredom in life. Part of the life of prayer is listening prayer. When we pray God promises, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go.” (Psalms 32:8 NIV) I have found that when I listen He often sends me on an adventure that gets my heart pounding. What adventure in life will we miss by not giving Him that space?

5. God may seem further away.

It should be no surprise, but sometimes it is, that spending time in prayer makes us more aware of the presence of God. Henry Blackaby in his classic book Experiencing God says that, “True prayer does not lead to an encounter with God; it is an encounter with God.” How often has God seemed far away when He wouldn’t if I have pressed into a time of prayer?

This post is not to make you feel guilty, but rather encourage you to take advantage of turning each of these negatives around by building your prayer life.

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One of the Biggest Temptations for People of Prayer

It might be not be what you think, but slip ups in this area can mess up your effectiveness very quickly. It falls in the area of not being trusted. As people of prayer we are often entrusted with information that is confidential in nature. In my work of ministering to pastors it happens all the time. This is for a couple of reasons:

1. People will trust you with things if they know you will pray for it.

People who know that you are a person of prayer will give you information about their needs. They are looking for someone they know will not just say they will pray about it, but who will actually pray about the need. But if word gets out that you can’t be trusted with that information, because you are going to blab it to everyone, you may miss some prayer assignments that God wanted you to pray.

2. God will trust you with things He knows you will talk to Him about.

God will bring into His confidence people who He is confident that He can share His heart. He told Abraham, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen 18:17) A prayer that I pray often is, “God reveal your secrets to me.” But God is looking to see if I can handle the information that He shares in an appropriate manner. We need to practice in being trusted.

A pastor that had a great prayer team around him had one main qualification to be on the team. Anyone on his personal prayer team must not, “be given to sins of the tongue.” Is this an area that you need to strengthen to go to the next exciting level that God would have for you in your ministry of prayer?