Deliver Us From Evil
Bible Study
The Key to Life
Reflections on the Lord's Prayer
Object:
"O God, deliver us from evil." But God cannot deliver us from evil as long as we want that evil. He lets us choose what we want and don't want. He made us free. When we really want to be free of evil He forgives us and empowers us to reject the evil. It's like Huckleberry Finn put it: "What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong?" Huckleberry needed the power to want to do right.
Being what we are, prayer for deliverance is a complicated thing:
From the pride,
which cannot admit that it is wrong;
From the self-will,
which can see nothing but its own way;
From the self-righteousness,
which can see no flaw within itself;
From the callousness,
which has sinned so often that it has ceased to care;
From the defiance,
which always puts the blame on someone or
something else;
From the heart so hardened,
that it cannot repent.
Give us at all times
Eyes which are open to our own faults;
A conscience which is sensitive and quick to warn;
A heart which cannot sin in peace,
but which is moved to regret and remorse.
So grant that being truly penitent we
may be truly forgiven, so that we may
find your love is great enough
to cover all our sin; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen
("Prayer for the Christian Year" by William Barclay)
When we cry out to Him, He forgives our sins and delivers us from the evil that enslaves us. This is the Christmas message:
Do not be afraid, I have good news for you. There is a great joy coming to the whole people. Today in the City of David, a Deliverer has been born to you -- the Messiah, the Lord.
This is the ultimate reality. It is the power of Christian faith that delivers me, you, our nation, our whole world from evil, that is, when we give ourselves to Christ and accept his forgiveness. But so many hold on to the evil and are not delivered.
Sin is our active participation in evil; our disobedience of God and the burden of guilt is the price we pay. And finally our participation leads to ultimate separation from life, love, truth, goodness, and God Himself. And all is lost. O God, deliver us from our lostness. Lead us home and receive us as you did the prodigal son.
Evil is crushing the world. It is destroying our homes and our youth. It is poisoning our business relations. It is corrupting our government. And all because we want it that way. O God, turn us around. Deliver us from evil. Help us to stop playing with evil before it takes possession of us.
A great psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, is calling us back to an understanding of sin, so we can be on guard against it. John wants to blame the problems on God. He writes to his mom and dad: "If God is good like He says, why do kids starve and diseases cripple and catastrophes kill... why do the blind grope in darkness and the mentally ill in a private chaos?... Why, God, why?" (quoted by Leslie Brandt).
These are good questions. Humankind has been struggling with them for thousands of years. In life we struggle with questions like these. We do not know all the answers, but in encounter with God and each other we are catching glimpses. When Jesus taught us to pray, "Deliver us from evil," he knew that God could not deliver us unless we also fight in the battle against evil. When we join Christ in the war against evil, he gives us the victory. We are delivered; we are forgiven and enabled.
David Seeley writes in the Saturday Review: "Just as you cannot have civilization without character, perhaps you cannot have character without civilization; and perhaps we are losing both." God help us to want to be delivered. Recently we were reminded that two percent of the drivers on the highway are legally drunk; yet this two percent are involved in more than fifty percent of the fatal accidents. Much of the evil we have to fight is within us.
A recent study reported by Dr. Peter Witt of the State Department of Mental Health pictured a perfect spider web -- one of the most beautiful and symmetrical designs in nature. At the right was the picture of a spider web built by a spider under the influence of drugs -- it was a nightmare to end all nightmares; a horrible tangle of meaningless, jagged web, and the spider was all twisted up in a knot in the middle of the wreckage. Now, a spider cannot help it when somebody injects him with a drug. But, when we are twisted in the middle of our own life, it usually is our own choice. Deliver us from the evil of our own choice. We are all mixed up in our own tendency toward evil.
There are dragons in us. The ego was created to control them, to direct them. But sometimes the dragons control the ego and we are captured, controlled by evil. Remember: "Unto us a Deliverer is born." He wants to deliver us; he has the power to deliver us. Let Christ into your life. He can handle dragons.
In this everlasting struggle against evil the saints are sculptured. This is where God builds character. Dorothy Sayers, influenced by Dante, looks at evil:
At the top are the irresponsibles, who refused choice; blown on the winds or sodden in the marsh-water of their passions; then the deliberate hardening of the will to the choice of the wrong made in full knowledge, the will to violence, the will to deceit -- circle below circle of fire and filth and disease, down to the ultimate treachery in which all feeling, all intellect, every conception, is frozen... The rain is here complete; the beauty does not shine through the corruption: it is the corruption of beauty itself.
(from Christian Letters To A Post-Christian World, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969)
This is hell: Persons by their own choice, sinking to the utter corruption of love, of meaning, of life. O God, deliver us from evil!
Simone Weil frightens me when she confesses: "I have germs of all possible crimes, or nearly all, within me." We walk in reach of heaven, by God's grace; but, on the other side, we stumble along the very edge of hell. Former Senator Mark Hatfield scares me: "We live in a society that totally serves mammon." The power of the almighty dollar enslaves us. A sick millionaire confessed to his psychiatrist: "I haven't the slightest idea what to do with all my money. I don't need it, but I can't bear to give any of it away." He died prematurely. Christ could have delivered him. We need to recognize the fact that "we are our destiny."
The Great Wall of China, the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon, was built by the civilized Chinese to keep out the barbarian hordes of the north. They thought they had built it high enough and strong enough so that it would never be breached, and they lived securely behind their wall. In the first hundred years after the building of the wall, China was invaded three times by the barbarians. They did not climb the wall; neither did they breach the wall; they bribed the gatekeeper, and marched in. This is where we ourselves become a part of the problem. At the center of our wills, we will wrongly; we want the evil and let the evil in. Then we ourselves become a part of the force of evil at work in the world.
An old Indian, wrestling with the problem of good and evil, came up with an interesting observation: "There are two dogs that live inside of me, a black dog and a white dog. The white dog wants me to live for that which is good; the black dog wants me to live for that which is evil. They fight each other all the time. But I know what to do! I feed the white dog and starve the black dog." Many of us are feeding the wrong dog! Our contemporary culture is spoon-feeding the wrong dog.
The novel Street of Knives by Cyril Harris (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1950) wrestled with this same old problem. Little Hugh was riding on the old Mississippi steamboat down the river. He saw a man on deck, leaning against the rail. Seeing that the man had a deeply worried look, Hugh asked if he had lost something. The man answered that he had, and he explained to the little boy that the guardrail, against which he was leaning, marked the line between safety and danger: "That's what it is here for, to lean on. To keep me from falling in. Something to hold me back when I get too near the edge. It has to be strong, and it has to be there -- well, that's what I've lost -- the handrail. Men call it God. I'm looking for it."
Through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, God is seeking to help us rediscover the lines of demarcation between good and evil. Through His Holy Spirit working within us, He will guide us and enable us. In these days of moral and ethical blindness we had better reach out to the guardrail and hold on to life, and move forward.
Recently, I sat in deep encounter with a group of college students. They were looking for the "guardrail," probing for it; not just the guardrail, but something deeper. They were looking for the "power." They were seeking "God." They were hungry for a "place to serve." One young man who had been on drugs was beginning to realize the power of Christ in his own life's struggle. In encounter with Christ, he was realizing an exciting motivation for meaningful living. The young people were experiencing that in life's struggle, God is teaching us how to live. We learn in the living, and by faith, dedication, and experience, we feel the surge of new life.
T.S. Eliot chiseled phrases like a sculptor chisels marble. In one of his plays a character exclaims, "You are a people to whom nothing has happened." This is ultimate tragedy -- to live on the sidelines, never to be involved in life, passing through life as if you were not a part of it. God throws us into the middle of life, and things happen to us, and we are shaped. Our response to God, to ourselves, and to others makes a life. God does not deliver us from the attack of evil: He delivers us in and through the attack of evil, as we respond to Him.
At times we are called to be the agents for the deliverance of others; at times the deliverance of others is blocked by our playing with evil. A part of our own healing is getting under the load with someone else:
In my suffering
I seek to help one in pain.
In my sorrow
I seek to comfort one who grieves.
In my weakness
I seek to strengthen one who cannot stand alone.
In my fear
I seek to give courage to one who trembles.
(Source unknown)
Christianity is a religion of deliverance! It sets a person free! There is evil in men's actions, evil in men's thoughts, evil in the subconscious mind. "Deliver us from evil." There is power in the mystery of evil. It is insidious and more powerful than I am. But I am strengthened in the knowledge that there is a greater power in the mystery of God, power sufficient to handle and control the mysterious power of evil. God is helping me fight against the deep evil that I cannot handle alone. There is evil that attacks us. There is evil that possesses us and uses us to spread evil. Sometimes evil breaks out and is visible. Sometimes it kicks in and destroys the inner person. Paul Tournier reveals a helpful insight: "It is commitment that creates the person."
You do not get away from evil by gazing at it and complaining about it. A few years ago I was called in to help a woman in a desperate experience of depression. She told me that for three years she had sat in her chair, faced a dark corner, and prayed: "O God, remove this burden! I cannot go on!" Of course she had not been delivered. The burden was heavier than ever before. She had nursed it and cultivated it. By this repetition and concentration upon the evil, she had cut deep channels of sensitivity for this evil in her own subconscious mind until she was totally locked in. I asked her to turn toward the one window in the room and pray after me: "O God, thank you for your love and for this light that shines through this window into my life. Thank you for your strength and for your presence with me. Take my hand; lead me step by step, one day at a time, a little closer to you, a little closer to life and freedom. Thank you. Amen." I asked her to do this faithfully every day. She got better. "Deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever." My friend had deepened her illness by concentrating on it. She found deliverance by concentrating on the love and the power of God. If you try hard enough to forget something bad, you will probably never forget it.
The dynamics of faith are very effective in the battle with evil. It takes more than a frontal attack against evil. It takes the deep assurance that God, Himself, is fighting within me with all the power of His love against that evil which seeks to possess me. If I trust Him, God will win and set me free.
The only safe place in the universe is in God. God has the last word and He is stronger than evil. What He cannot complete in this life, He works out in the next life. He did not deliver Jesus from the cross; He delivered him on the cross. He did not deliver him from the grave; He delivered him through the grave. He did not deliver him from death; He delivered him beyond death. God works within the boundaries of that which the faith of human beings makes possible. "And God was there all the time." There is a "love that will not let me go."
Christ sets us free from sin and death, from greed and selfishness, from fear and hate.
"Christ asleep within my boat, whipped by wind yet still afloat." This gives me hope in my own struggle with the problem of evil. Saint Paul was caught in the struggle, but he shouted his victory:
For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depth -- nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Romans 8:38, 39 (NEB)
Deliverance from evil is a fact! If I trust Him.
Being what we are, prayer for deliverance is a complicated thing:
From the pride,
which cannot admit that it is wrong;
From the self-will,
which can see nothing but its own way;
From the self-righteousness,
which can see no flaw within itself;
From the callousness,
which has sinned so often that it has ceased to care;
From the defiance,
which always puts the blame on someone or
something else;
From the heart so hardened,
that it cannot repent.
Give us at all times
Eyes which are open to our own faults;
A conscience which is sensitive and quick to warn;
A heart which cannot sin in peace,
but which is moved to regret and remorse.
So grant that being truly penitent we
may be truly forgiven, so that we may
find your love is great enough
to cover all our sin; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen
("Prayer for the Christian Year" by William Barclay)
When we cry out to Him, He forgives our sins and delivers us from the evil that enslaves us. This is the Christmas message:
Do not be afraid, I have good news for you. There is a great joy coming to the whole people. Today in the City of David, a Deliverer has been born to you -- the Messiah, the Lord.
This is the ultimate reality. It is the power of Christian faith that delivers me, you, our nation, our whole world from evil, that is, when we give ourselves to Christ and accept his forgiveness. But so many hold on to the evil and are not delivered.
Sin is our active participation in evil; our disobedience of God and the burden of guilt is the price we pay. And finally our participation leads to ultimate separation from life, love, truth, goodness, and God Himself. And all is lost. O God, deliver us from our lostness. Lead us home and receive us as you did the prodigal son.
Evil is crushing the world. It is destroying our homes and our youth. It is poisoning our business relations. It is corrupting our government. And all because we want it that way. O God, turn us around. Deliver us from evil. Help us to stop playing with evil before it takes possession of us.
A great psychiatrist, Karl Menninger, is calling us back to an understanding of sin, so we can be on guard against it. John wants to blame the problems on God. He writes to his mom and dad: "If God is good like He says, why do kids starve and diseases cripple and catastrophes kill... why do the blind grope in darkness and the mentally ill in a private chaos?... Why, God, why?" (quoted by Leslie Brandt).
These are good questions. Humankind has been struggling with them for thousands of years. In life we struggle with questions like these. We do not know all the answers, but in encounter with God and each other we are catching glimpses. When Jesus taught us to pray, "Deliver us from evil," he knew that God could not deliver us unless we also fight in the battle against evil. When we join Christ in the war against evil, he gives us the victory. We are delivered; we are forgiven and enabled.
David Seeley writes in the Saturday Review: "Just as you cannot have civilization without character, perhaps you cannot have character without civilization; and perhaps we are losing both." God help us to want to be delivered. Recently we were reminded that two percent of the drivers on the highway are legally drunk; yet this two percent are involved in more than fifty percent of the fatal accidents. Much of the evil we have to fight is within us.
A recent study reported by Dr. Peter Witt of the State Department of Mental Health pictured a perfect spider web -- one of the most beautiful and symmetrical designs in nature. At the right was the picture of a spider web built by a spider under the influence of drugs -- it was a nightmare to end all nightmares; a horrible tangle of meaningless, jagged web, and the spider was all twisted up in a knot in the middle of the wreckage. Now, a spider cannot help it when somebody injects him with a drug. But, when we are twisted in the middle of our own life, it usually is our own choice. Deliver us from the evil of our own choice. We are all mixed up in our own tendency toward evil.
There are dragons in us. The ego was created to control them, to direct them. But sometimes the dragons control the ego and we are captured, controlled by evil. Remember: "Unto us a Deliverer is born." He wants to deliver us; he has the power to deliver us. Let Christ into your life. He can handle dragons.
In this everlasting struggle against evil the saints are sculptured. This is where God builds character. Dorothy Sayers, influenced by Dante, looks at evil:
At the top are the irresponsibles, who refused choice; blown on the winds or sodden in the marsh-water of their passions; then the deliberate hardening of the will to the choice of the wrong made in full knowledge, the will to violence, the will to deceit -- circle below circle of fire and filth and disease, down to the ultimate treachery in which all feeling, all intellect, every conception, is frozen... The rain is here complete; the beauty does not shine through the corruption: it is the corruption of beauty itself.
(from Christian Letters To A Post-Christian World, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1969)
This is hell: Persons by their own choice, sinking to the utter corruption of love, of meaning, of life. O God, deliver us from evil!
Simone Weil frightens me when she confesses: "I have germs of all possible crimes, or nearly all, within me." We walk in reach of heaven, by God's grace; but, on the other side, we stumble along the very edge of hell. Former Senator Mark Hatfield scares me: "We live in a society that totally serves mammon." The power of the almighty dollar enslaves us. A sick millionaire confessed to his psychiatrist: "I haven't the slightest idea what to do with all my money. I don't need it, but I can't bear to give any of it away." He died prematurely. Christ could have delivered him. We need to recognize the fact that "we are our destiny."
The Great Wall of China, the only man-made structure that can be seen from the moon, was built by the civilized Chinese to keep out the barbarian hordes of the north. They thought they had built it high enough and strong enough so that it would never be breached, and they lived securely behind their wall. In the first hundred years after the building of the wall, China was invaded three times by the barbarians. They did not climb the wall; neither did they breach the wall; they bribed the gatekeeper, and marched in. This is where we ourselves become a part of the problem. At the center of our wills, we will wrongly; we want the evil and let the evil in. Then we ourselves become a part of the force of evil at work in the world.
An old Indian, wrestling with the problem of good and evil, came up with an interesting observation: "There are two dogs that live inside of me, a black dog and a white dog. The white dog wants me to live for that which is good; the black dog wants me to live for that which is evil. They fight each other all the time. But I know what to do! I feed the white dog and starve the black dog." Many of us are feeding the wrong dog! Our contemporary culture is spoon-feeding the wrong dog.
The novel Street of Knives by Cyril Harris (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1950) wrestled with this same old problem. Little Hugh was riding on the old Mississippi steamboat down the river. He saw a man on deck, leaning against the rail. Seeing that the man had a deeply worried look, Hugh asked if he had lost something. The man answered that he had, and he explained to the little boy that the guardrail, against which he was leaning, marked the line between safety and danger: "That's what it is here for, to lean on. To keep me from falling in. Something to hold me back when I get too near the edge. It has to be strong, and it has to be there -- well, that's what I've lost -- the handrail. Men call it God. I'm looking for it."
Through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, God is seeking to help us rediscover the lines of demarcation between good and evil. Through His Holy Spirit working within us, He will guide us and enable us. In these days of moral and ethical blindness we had better reach out to the guardrail and hold on to life, and move forward.
Recently, I sat in deep encounter with a group of college students. They were looking for the "guardrail," probing for it; not just the guardrail, but something deeper. They were looking for the "power." They were seeking "God." They were hungry for a "place to serve." One young man who had been on drugs was beginning to realize the power of Christ in his own life's struggle. In encounter with Christ, he was realizing an exciting motivation for meaningful living. The young people were experiencing that in life's struggle, God is teaching us how to live. We learn in the living, and by faith, dedication, and experience, we feel the surge of new life.
T.S. Eliot chiseled phrases like a sculptor chisels marble. In one of his plays a character exclaims, "You are a people to whom nothing has happened." This is ultimate tragedy -- to live on the sidelines, never to be involved in life, passing through life as if you were not a part of it. God throws us into the middle of life, and things happen to us, and we are shaped. Our response to God, to ourselves, and to others makes a life. God does not deliver us from the attack of evil: He delivers us in and through the attack of evil, as we respond to Him.
At times we are called to be the agents for the deliverance of others; at times the deliverance of others is blocked by our playing with evil. A part of our own healing is getting under the load with someone else:
In my suffering
I seek to help one in pain.
In my sorrow
I seek to comfort one who grieves.
In my weakness
I seek to strengthen one who cannot stand alone.
In my fear
I seek to give courage to one who trembles.
(Source unknown)
Christianity is a religion of deliverance! It sets a person free! There is evil in men's actions, evil in men's thoughts, evil in the subconscious mind. "Deliver us from evil." There is power in the mystery of evil. It is insidious and more powerful than I am. But I am strengthened in the knowledge that there is a greater power in the mystery of God, power sufficient to handle and control the mysterious power of evil. God is helping me fight against the deep evil that I cannot handle alone. There is evil that attacks us. There is evil that possesses us and uses us to spread evil. Sometimes evil breaks out and is visible. Sometimes it kicks in and destroys the inner person. Paul Tournier reveals a helpful insight: "It is commitment that creates the person."
You do not get away from evil by gazing at it and complaining about it. A few years ago I was called in to help a woman in a desperate experience of depression. She told me that for three years she had sat in her chair, faced a dark corner, and prayed: "O God, remove this burden! I cannot go on!" Of course she had not been delivered. The burden was heavier than ever before. She had nursed it and cultivated it. By this repetition and concentration upon the evil, she had cut deep channels of sensitivity for this evil in her own subconscious mind until she was totally locked in. I asked her to turn toward the one window in the room and pray after me: "O God, thank you for your love and for this light that shines through this window into my life. Thank you for your strength and for your presence with me. Take my hand; lead me step by step, one day at a time, a little closer to you, a little closer to life and freedom. Thank you. Amen." I asked her to do this faithfully every day. She got better. "Deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever." My friend had deepened her illness by concentrating on it. She found deliverance by concentrating on the love and the power of God. If you try hard enough to forget something bad, you will probably never forget it.
The dynamics of faith are very effective in the battle with evil. It takes more than a frontal attack against evil. It takes the deep assurance that God, Himself, is fighting within me with all the power of His love against that evil which seeks to possess me. If I trust Him, God will win and set me free.
The only safe place in the universe is in God. God has the last word and He is stronger than evil. What He cannot complete in this life, He works out in the next life. He did not deliver Jesus from the cross; He delivered him on the cross. He did not deliver him from the grave; He delivered him through the grave. He did not deliver him from death; He delivered him beyond death. God works within the boundaries of that which the faith of human beings makes possible. "And God was there all the time." There is a "love that will not let me go."
Christ sets us free from sin and death, from greed and selfishness, from fear and hate.
"Christ asleep within my boat, whipped by wind yet still afloat." This gives me hope in my own struggle with the problem of evil. Saint Paul was caught in the struggle, but he shouted his victory:
For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depth -- nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Romans 8:38, 39 (NEB)
Deliverance from evil is a fact! If I trust Him.
