Into the prayer life of Jesus - Lead us from temptation… deliver us from evil
This is our Sunday teaching from Senior Pastor, Tom Thompson. Recorded live at our service in Harris Academy Purley, Croydon on Sunday 26th October, 2025. Below you can find the full talk audio, and a summary article.
Want to lead a Connect Group session on this teaching? The notes are here!
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
Most of us have prayed those words from the Lord’s Prayer hundreds of times. On Sunday we sat with them — slowly — and heard two big truths.
First, we need God to protect us from the evil that comes against us.
Second, we need God to protect us from the stuff inside us that can wreck our own lives.
In the Pentecostal / charismatic stream of the church, “deliver us from evil” is usually about spiritual attack. We believe there is a real enemy; Jesus talks about the thief who “comes to steal, kill and destroy.” We pray for freedom from dark, oppressive things that try to sit on our lives, and we believe Jesus has authority to break them.
But there’s another stream in the church — the contemplative tradition — that hears the same line and says: “Lord, don’t let me walk into situations where I’m likely to fall apart.” In other words, “Lead me not into the kind of trial where I know I’m weak.” The danger isn’t just out there. Sometimes the danger is in me.
Both are true. Vineyard wants both.
From the first pages of the Bible, humanity was made to live under the guidance and protection of God. In Eden, God’s presence and human life were intertwined. Sin fractures that. When we push God away, two things happen: we’re more open to attack from the outside, and we also lose our internal compass. We hurt others. We hurt ourselves.
Prayer is how we invite God’s protective, guiding hand back onto our actual lives.
So how do we pray this in real terms?
From the contemplative side, it means asking: “Where am I vulnerable?” Not in theory — in practice. Some situations barely touch you. Others flip a switch in you: anger, greed, envy, lust, fear, resentment, self-pity, whatever it is. Part of spiritual maturity is letting God show you those danger zones before you walk into them.
Tools like the Examen (reflective prayer at the end of the day) or even personality frameworks like the Enneagram can help surface that shadow side. Not as scripture, not as fate, but as a mirror. “Lord, show me the places I’m most likely to self-destruct. Lead me away from those. Create in me a clean heart.”
And we don’t do that alone. Around the UK, church leaders are talking about what some are calling a “quiet revival”: people (especially younger adults) discovering that the secular story — “look inside yourself, you’ve got everything you need” — just isn’t holding. All over the country people are literally turning up at churches saying, “I can’t do this on my own. I need God.” There’s a hunger for discipleship, honesty, holiness and help.
That’s why we keep talking about huddles here: groups of three people who meet monthly, tell the truth about what’s really going on, pray for each other, and keep going. “Deliver us…” is a community prayer.
From the charismatic side, we also name the reality of spiritual oppression. Sometimes life really is like a blocked gutter: something has got lodged in there and everything is backing up. And sometimes Jesus just removes it. Quickly. Cleanly. With authority.
We heard a simple model for that — the “four C’s”:
Confess (Jesus is Lord; here’s my sin, honestly, in the light).
Cancel (in Jesus’ name I cancel any claim the enemy has gained in that area).
Command (in Jesus’ name, darkness has to leave).
Come (Holy Spirit, fill that space with truth, love, freedom).
This isn’t about shame. It’s about freedom. We’ve seen people set free from habitual lust, bitterness, anger, unforgiveness — not just so they feel better, but so they can actually live differently.
The point of all this is not “try harder.” The point is: take Jesus seriously.
Temptation and trial will come. The enemy is real. Our own weakness is real. But so is the power and presence of God.
So we pray: Father, lead us not into the places where we’re likely to fall, and deliver us from the evil that wants to take us out. Protect us. Guide us. Change us. Fill us.