The Lessons of Deliverance

UV 820/10,000 The Lessons of Deliverance “ O Lord, you brought me up from the grave, you spared me from going down into the pit.” Psalm 30 v 3 Just as God delivered David from the brink of death, the Lord has delivered me from death several times. Satan had conspired to end my life from the days of my youth but the Lord changed my destiny. The good thing about human experience is that one can transfer the lessons of that experience to others without them having to go through the same. To be delivered from physical death is the ultimate test as well as boost of faith. Once one is delivered and once we know it is the hand of the Lord that has done it, we will be always in a mood to praise the Lord and rejoice in Him. We can dance and worship, singing, “ My beloved is mine and I am His and His banner over me is love.” It implies that all that we are is His and all that is His is ours. One of the foremost lessons I have learnt and reinforced by multiple testimonies of deliverance, mine own and that of others, is the need to always and in all our ways to remember the Lord, to be aware of His presence in us, near us and around us. He is always mindful of us and should we also not reciprocate by continually praying, continually praising, continually worshipping and communing with the Lord. The depths of the miry pit is also a metaphor for the various types of deliverances the Lord has wrought in our lives. It could be financial loss or debt. It could be ill health or mishaps of different kinds. The Lord recently said, “ You have been weeping over an axe-head that you have borrowed but it has fallen under water. I will restore it.” Accordingly, He delivered us as a family from a particular situation that was not getting resolved over a long period of time. But the greatest deliverance the Lord does for each of us is the deliverance of our souls from the fiery pit of hell. The other deliverances are only meant as a foretaste and to prepare the ground for this ultimate deliverance of our souls. I read once of a young man who survived a train that plunged into a lake but later when he was on a picnic with friends in a hill station, a sudden flashflood washed him away. What is the use of being delivered from lesser threats when one perishes in the ultimate test? Not only does the Lord pull us up from the depths, He sets us on a rock. Once we are delivered from death or death-like situations, we will realize that our security does not come from the things of the world, our position, our connections or our influence but it rests in the Lord. Jesus is the Rock. The next time we face similar dire situations, we know that we only have to cry out to the Rock. The promises of God are like the rope that He throws down to us so that we can pull ourselves to safety. When Daniel’s three companions were thrown into the pit of a fiery furnace, the Lord Jesus did not send anyone to their aid but He Himself went for scripture records that “the fourth one looked like a Son of God.” Prateep V Philip