Here your friend is asking God to take leadership in their life; and they are asking Him to not lead them into things that would cause them to sin. Since God is a good God, why would they need to ask Him to not lead them in the direction of temptation?

There are two ways for your friend to learn life lessons. The best way is for them to give God permission to teach them the things they need to know without them having to learn the hard way. But, some of your friends are pretty hard headed. They have to learn some things by going out and committing sins and paying the consequences. Through God’s leadership, He will ALLOW them to go into temptation so they can learn, not so they can be destroyed by it.

God wants your friend to have a teachable attitude so He can just tell them things. He would like for them to take His new training information and start praying and asking for the power to be able to get it into their lives. But, some of them just can’t learn certain things the easy way.

God has committed Himself to honoring your friend’s decisions. He is determined to maintain their freedom of will. So, He allows them to take themselves into a tough situation where the temptations to sin and do wrong are strong. God, Himself will never tempt them to sin; however, He will allow them to go their own way for a time. During this time they will experience what it is like to start running their own life again. It helps them see how important it is for them to allow God to do His will in their earthly life like it is done in heaven.

For example, God wants to completely deliver your friend from the sins of life. Let’s say He provides them with the principles and the power to stay away from certain things that are the root causes of these failures in life. But, suppose they decide to go ahead and involve their self in those root causes. They know better; but instead of praying and asking God to help them make the right decision, they go ahead on their own strength and expose themselves to things that bring the mistakes, failures, and sins of life back.

While still under God’s leadership, your friend can be allowed by God to experience old temptations. Because of their lack of a teachable attitude, they will be allowed to experience the root causes of the sins of life that they are having the most difficulties with. God would rather that they just learn how to avoid these temptations through prayer. But, since they CHOSE to learn this lesson the hard way, God’s leadership allows them to enter into temptation. All during this time God is controlling the circumstances and leading them away from anything that could destroy them. But, He will allow them to experience enough for them to learn from it.

Your friend could have prayed and asked God to “lead them not into temptation;” and He would have protected them. This request will always be available for them to use; but, it must be used on a case by case basis. When they find themselves being faced with the “opportunity” to get involved in things that cause them to go back to having struggles with the sins of life, they need to pray this prayer and it will save them a lot of pain.

The temptation to do the wrong or evil thing is strong inside your friend. Addictive pleasure comes their way, when they yield to temptation. They get pleasure from simple things such as talking about someone or bawling them out. It is hard to explain why humans get pleasure out of hurting people’s reputations or feelings. But, it can all be traced back to the spiritual disease of sin. The sin disease pushes your friend toward making themselves look good at other’s expense. Other sins involve them hurting themselves.

Drug and alcohol abuse can tear away at your friend’s body and brain. Why they would sin against their body and hurt their own life is quite a puzzle. Satan is willing to give them extreme pleasure that exceeds the normal pleasures humans typically get. Once they experience this extreme pleasure, it has a tendency to addict them and force them to repeat the process for the rest of their lives.

Your friend needs this prayer to help keep them from hurting themselves and others. Check and see if your friend is ready to be set free from yielding to these and other temptations to hurt themselves and those around them. If you find they are ready, you can have them pray this portion of this prayer two ways. You can first have them say: “Lead me not into temptation.” Then you can have them say: “Lead us not into temptation.”