WHAT DELIVERANCE LOOKS LIKE (WDLL)

Every time I hear the word Deliverance, what comes to mind is a very dramatic scene where I picture a deliverance service or an exorcism session where demons or evil spirits are being cast out of a person by pastors or priests. I picture the long sessions of prayers, the sweating, the screams of the possessed person, and the exhaustion of the ministers after such sessions. For the longest time, I held a singular view of deliverance until recently, when the Lord began to open my eyes and reveal to me the true meaning of deliverance and what it looks like. Definition-wise, deliverance means liberation, rescue, saving, removal from an unpleasant situation or circumstance, and the most obvious one, the act of delivering someone or something. I can now picture it as a ‘setting free’, a ‘loosing’, an ‘unbinding’, a ‘separation’, and a ‘change of location’; it is being given an opportunity to a new life.

Deliverance is a product of mercy—God’s mercy on us. Often times, it does not have that dramatic effect we are looking for or expect to feel. What does it look like then? Deliverance looks like a separation from a person or place, an instruction God gives you, a person God puts in your life to help you, a circumstance or situation you find yourself in, a spiritual shift, joy, and peace. Deliverance looks like forgiveness, obedience, choosing to die to self-daily, and the one that is most times overlooked or underappreciated yet the starting point of it all—the choice to follow Jesus, making him your personal Savior and Lord.

Colossians 1:13-14: ¹³ He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.(NKJV)

Let’s look at the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17:8–24. Verses 8 and 9 say:

⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ⁹ “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. See, I have commanded a widow there to provide for you.” (NKJV)

For this widow, her deliverance came in the form of an instruction to feed the prophet, and for her, that instruction meant she and her son would starve to death after giving up their last meal, which didn’t look like deliverance at all. But that simple act of obedience secured for her family a meal till the end of the famine, which for the longest time I thought was the major deliverance in that story until subsequently down the chapter her son died, and the prophet who was fed by her had to perform a miracle of bringing her son back to life. What a turn of events that started with a simple yet difficult-to-obey instruction! This widow couldn’t have predicted this turn of events even if she tried, and thankfully, she did not miss out on her deliverance.

As individuals, we often need deliverance in areas of our emotions, relationships, demonic attacks, finances, addictions, strongholds, our past, mental limitations, and a lot more that are too numerable to count. The Lord has been and is constantly delivering us from them all, but the ultimate question is, do you recognize when it happens? Or are you still sitting in an already opened cage? You need to begin by asking the Lord to open your eyes to the reality of what he has done and is still doing for you.

Knowing this, then probably you will not make light of the Lord’s deliverance, then maybe you will begin to walk in the victory that you already possess, and ultimately you will begin to dissociate yourself from the company and places God saved you from. Perhaps if you just paid more attention, a deliverance may just be happening now for you.

Prayer: Lord, I thank you for the countless times you have delivered me from situations I needed saving from. Thank you for the gift of your Son, Jesus, my ultimate deliverer. Open my eyes today to begin to see what you are doing for me and help me to recognize my deliverance when it comes.