PRAYER AS DELIVERANCE

This Sunday we look at the one aspect of prayer we share most in common with both our believing and non-believing neighbors...the Prayer of Deliverance. I really do believe this is the most common type of prayer uttered by all people. As I said last week, there are no atheists in foxholes. The fact is that for some people it is the crucible of crisis that ever drives them to pray. I mean, how many of our prayers have some aspect of, protect me, guide me, deliver me, rescue me, help me, watch over me? A great many of our prayers are cries to the Lord, which is perfectly fine as these types of prayers are littered throughout scripture. Even Jesus in the garden asked God to take from him the cup of wrath. But how often do we pray a prayer of deliverance with no expectance of him showing up? I call these "wishing well" prayers! The truth is all of us will need to be delivered even if it is just from our sin alone. I also believe we will all need Jesus, just better to know him before you need him. I always marvel at people who pray for deliverance and then attribute their rescue to luck. Or the person who prays for deliverance and then isn't happy with the means God chose in deliverance, I reference the Israelites on their way out of bondage in Egypt. So this Sunday, I hope we affirm that prayers of deliverance are both common and welcomed by God. However, I do not want us to miss that the methodology of God's chosen deliverance might not look like what we wish for. After all wishing and hope are not the same thing! And yet, God's chosen method of deliverance may be the very thing God needs to be glorified through our coming victory!