Deliver

Lately, I’ve had several people close to me endure a great deal of suffering.  I love these people very dearly.  But it’s interesting because I know them from such different areas of my life and their pain is so very different.  One pain is physical while the other is emotional.  One pain is chronic while the other came on very suddenly.  One pain may have a cure although it has been extremely elusive.  The other pain promises no cure in this life.

I suppose most faithful Christians have a list of good people they pray for each night, good people who shouldn’t be suffering as they do.   And when we remember (or at least when I remember) we pray that God will do something about this pain.

These prayers asking God to help, comfort, and healing I think could rightly fall under the single title of “Deliverance.”

Often in the Bible, the text will often use the term in connection with protection from enemies or victory in war effort.  For example, after David was delivered from the hand of King Saul who was seeking to kill him he wrote this Pslam:

I love You, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,  My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge;  My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies.

-Psalm 18:1-3

This Psalm is a moving poem of God’s faithfulness in time of conflict. However, many of us today would hardly think that we have any real enemies lying in wait for us outside our doors.  At least, not in the way David did. 

No. For us in America today, the enemies we have lying in wait for us usually sit on the other end of a simple phone call.

A phone call that tells us exactly what we don’t what to hear, or couldn’t even imagine hearing:

“The cancer is back.”

“There’s been an accident.”

“I’m sorry, but things just aren’t working out.”

Our enemies lie in wait for us, and what are we to do?

In the Lord’s Prayer, there a very simple line that we repeat each week in worship, “and deliver us from evil.”  This prayer that Jesus taught us and encourages us to keep such an important part of our faith walk.

Jesus knew we would enter into evil times of suffering.  He himself was not immune to the suffering of this world.  However, the fact that we say the “deliver us from evil” in the Lords prayer means two things.

First, there is real evil and brokenness in the world that we may experience.  This is not a test. This is not a challenge.  And it is something other than God’s intent.

Secondly, because evil is never God’s will for our lives we should be able to ask for deliverance.

Weekly, sometimes daily, in churches across the world we pray for deliverance, remembering that Jesus has gone before us praying, working, living, dying, and rising again to deliver us from evil into God’s Kingdom.