Deliver Us

In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus taught the disciples how to pray… “Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts even as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but DELIVER US from evil” (vs 9-13). 

There’s a precious nugget of truth right at the end - Jesus told us to pray to be delivered from evil… not to “learn to adapt to it” or to “be relevant to it,” but to be delivered from it. Some critics like to accuse the saints of looking for an escape route from this earth and its evil, but Jesus, Himself, told us to pray for deliverance. Why? Shouldn’t we just learn to be a new generation of cool Believers, and be the Light and Salt this world needs? We err in thinking that we can “make friends” with this world and its love of sin. 

Jesus has indeed called us to be Salt and Light in this dark, flavorless, decaying world, while we are here, but He made it clear that this world is not our Home. In fact, He went as far as to say, “Do not love this world or the things of this world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them” (1 John 2:15). 

Friends, we are “strangers and sojourners in this land.” And the longer we’re here the more we know that this isn’t our Home. The world celebrates evil while our souls groan under the weight of it. We’re Homesick. Weary. Worn. We long to go Home. The beautiful part? Is that Jesus desires that, too. 

Jesus revealed His deep love for us in a prayer He said to His Father…  “Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am…” (John 17:24). That prayer of “deliverance” He told us to pray? He’s going to fulfill it! “For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore, comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18). 

May we all take the time to think about our Real Home and all its details. The Lover of our souls is there! Forever! Righteousness fills the air, and “sin and the curse are no more.” Joy, peace, and love, are fulfilled in ways we can only dream of here on earth. And it’s Forever! We have a New Address, friends, and it’s everything our weary souls long for. “Take the world but give me Jesus!”

(Devotional by Cheryl Hall-Laos)