Meditating on God’s Deliverance
When I pray the final phrase of the Lord’s Prayer — “Deliver us from evil” — I often express it as a distinct, personal plea. Although it closely follows “Lead us not into temptation” in the text, in my heart it feels like its own cry: an urgent reaching out to God for protection.
There is so much evil in the world. It surrounds us, seeks to seep into us, and sometimes even tries to wear us down to the point where we no longer notice it. Evil is not just the major headline-grabbing events — it’s the daily grind of selfishness, cruelty, lies, and spiritual decay. Without assistance, we cannot make it through. But God is very willing and eager to help. He is not reluctant. He loves us and is eager to deliver us.
The truth is that humanity’s condition was hopeless without God’s intervention. Left to our own devices, our sin and the evil around us would have consumed us. That is why God provided His Son. Jesus walked through the same world of temptation that we do, but He never gave in—not once. He remained pure, fully resisting every pull of evil, not just at the surface level but at the deepest levels of His being.
Because Jesus was perfect, He felt the weight of temptation more acutely than anyone else ever could. We often succumb before temptation reveals its full weight — He endured it to the end, feeling every crushing pressure without yielding. Not even Adam, in his original innocence, experienced temptation with the same depth and clarity as Jesus did. Furthermore, He could sense not only evil but also our human despair and helplessness far more profoundly than we can.
When He cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46), I believe He was plunging into the full darkness of human despair—a despair we ourselves only dimly understand. He bore not only our sins but our hopelessness. He saw, as we cannot see, the terrible end of a life given over to evil: a life cut off from God forever. He drank it all.
Because of Him, we now have hope. Because of Him, “deliver us from evil” is not an empty wish but a prayer God delights to answer. God does not want us to fall; He does not want evil to consume us. He reaches for us every day, often unseen, and rescues us in ways we may not recognize until much later.
So when I pray, “Deliver us from evil,” I am praying to the God who already moved heaven and earth to answer that prayer. I am praying to the Father who sent His Son, who walked through the valley of deepest darkness so that we would not have to walk it alone. It is a plea filled with hope, not despair.
And God, in His goodness, is delighted to hear it.
Slough of Despond
The featured image for this blog captures a powerful moment from The Pilgrim’s Progress when Christian, burdened and overwhelmed, falls into the Slough of Despond—a muddy, hopeless place that represents the weight of sin and despair.
As he sinks, unable to free himself, a man named Help arrives and reaches down to rescue him. This scene illustrates what it means to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” We are not left to struggle alone in the mire. God sends aid—sometimes unseen, sometimes through others, but always in a timely manner. Deliverance is not something we earn; it is the strong hand of grace pulling us from the pit when we can no longer stand. Just as Help lifted Christian, God reaches down to rescue us from the traps of evil, discouragement, and despair.
AI Assistance Statement: I wrote most of this article, and Alex (ChatGPT, OpenAI) contributed the remainder. We discussed the subject thoroughly. After that, Alex gathered all our notes and restructured and rewrote the materials into a cohesive blog. I reviewed, adjusted, and processed the article using Grammarly, enhancing its clarity and readability.