The question is, why did Jesus teach his followers to pray this statement? "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Our uninformed default reading implies that God leads us into temptation to tempt us. Not so. Perfectly offensive to God. Scripture informs us that God does not tempt us. James 1:13 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” God does not do the tempting.
But does he do the leading into the face of temptation? We may want to say 'No.' Yet our Saviour's experience informs us. Think of this. The LORD, Jesus Christ was led into the wilderness by God's Spirit to be tempted by the devil. Neither God the Father nor the Holy Spirit tempted Jesus with evil. The devil did the tempting. Yet the devil only gained access to Jesus because clearly, God (the Holy Spirit) brought Jesus into the presence of tests and temptations. Jesus when faced with temptations used the Word as his primary resource to resist temptation. This was an essential event for Jesus, as shortly after, the Father would proclaim, "This is my loved Son in whom I am well pleased." When Jesus teaches us to pray "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil," is he telling us to ask God to withhold such supreme direction? No. God orders all our steps and one of the places our steps take us every day is into the face of temptations and tests. Jesus the teacher, rather intends the emphasis to be on our request that God will hold us back from yielding to temptation that is presented to us. Ask that God will keep us from being persuaded and bewitched by the temptation, sucked in. Jesus wants us to be well pleasing in the sight of Almighty God. Our model for that success is Jesus who discerned temptation from flattery and deceit and used scripture to say "No." 
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