My Protector, My Deliverer

I’ve loved diving into the Lord’s Prayer in a deeper way. There are some very powerful things that we can learn from the things that Jesus said were important to ask God for. I want to expand upon Matthew 6:13 where it says, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

The cool thing is that in Jesus saying that we should ask to be protected and delivered, it means that God desires to protect and deliver us. We not only see that He wants to do those things for us, but that He is actually called our protector and deliverer. We see this in Psalm 18:2 when it says, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

The word ‘stronghold’ means, “a place that has been fortified so as to protect it against attack.” God is described as this, as a protector against attack. I find so much encouragement in this truth because I can rest on the fact that God is my unshakeable stronghold protecting me against the schemes of the enemy. Suddenly overcoming those things are possible because God already built the stronghold against it, we just have to actually let Him be our protector and deliverer.

Because God is described as these things, it makes sense that Jesus would say we should pray for God to be those things in our life. He’s not some distant man in the sky who tells us to deal with our struggles on our own merit. He is a God who is in the thick of the battle with us, fighting on our behalf.
 
The fun thing about this part of the Lord’s Prayer is that it only opens doors for more intimacy with God. You get to have a relationship with God that is vulnerable. What do you need to be protected or delivered from? Honesty in your conversations with God actually invites Him to breathe life into the dead places of our hearts. He wants to do that for us, and He wants to do that because He is deeply good.

Author | Kennedy Browning