A man asked me a question about the last petition that I had never been asked before, and it took me a while to see how good it was.
He said: which one is it asking for?
He explained. He had been praying deliver us from evil for years, and he had understood it as a request for protection, as a fence around his household. And he had watched several things come straight through the fence, and he had been quietly working out what that meant about him.
And then he had read the word deliver somewhere else and realized it might not mean what he had assumed.
There are two different things a person can be asking for and they are not the same, and knowing which one is in the petition changes what a person is entitled to expect.
A shield keeps a thing out and a rescue takes a person out
Those are the two, and everything else in this article follows.
A shield is preventive. It stands between a person and a thing and the thing does not arrive. That is what most of us are picturing when we pray about protection, and it is a real thing that Scripture does describe in places.
A rescue is not preventive. A rescue assumes the person is already in it. Nobody rescues somebody from a situation they are not in.
And the word in the petition is the second one.
But deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:13, King James Version)
The Greek word behind deliver carries the sense of drawing somebody out of something, of snatching them out. It presupposes that they are in it.
Which means the petition is not a request for a fence. It is the request of somebody who expects to end up in things and is asking about the getting out.
You have been asking for the right thing all along, and the petition assumes a person will be in it rather than promising they will not (Matthew 6:13), and the Spirit is the one who does that drawing out rather than a barrier holding anything off.
Who wrote the sentence, and from where
Paul writes a line near the end of his last letter that uses the same idea, and where he writes it from is the entire point.
And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. (2 Timothy 4:18)
He is in prison. He is not writing that from a comfortable retirement. The letter around it is full of people who have left him, of a cloak he wants brought before winter, of a first defense at which nobody stood with him.
And in the verse before, he says what deliverance actually looked like the last time.
Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me... and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. (2 Timothy 4:17)
Out of the mouth. Not away from the lion. He was in the mouth of it, and the deliverance is described as being taken out of a place he was already inside.
You are dealing with a God who is described as taking people out rather than as keeping them away, and Paul wrote that from a cell (2 Timothy 4:18). The Spirit is the one who makes the distinction land as a comfort rather than as a disappointment.
Why the difference matters practically
I want to be careful, because this could be heard as a lowering of expectation, and it is the opposite.
A person who thinks they were promised a shield and finds themselves in something concludes one of two things, and both of them are wrong. Either God has failed, or they have. Almost everybody chooses the second, and then spends years looking for the fault that let it through.
A person who knows the petition is about rescue does not have that problem. Being in it is not evidence of anything. It is the situation the prayer was written for.
You are not in this because a protection failed, and the petition never promised one (2 Timothy 4:17), and it is His Spirit who removes an accusation that a person has been carrying because of a misread word.
And the three men in Daniel say the whole thing in two sentences, and the second one is the one that makes it honest.
Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods. (Daniel 3:17 and 18)
But if not. They say it out loud, in front of the man who can kill them, and it does not weaken the first sentence, and it is not a hedge. It is a person saying what is true and what remains true either way.
You have permission for a but if not, and Scripture puts it in the mouths of the three men it holds up as the example (Daniel 3:17), and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who makes that sentence a strength rather than an escape hatch.
And this belongs here plainly, because this category reaches people in real danger. Where the thing somebody is inside is dangerous right now, the rescue is not an article. Tell a person today: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, somebody who can sit with you, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength, and going now is better than going later.
So say the cry, and then say which of the two you are asking for.
You have a petition written for people who are already inside something, and the word in it means to be drawn out rather than kept off (Matthew 6:13), and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the drawing out, from inside things nobody was ever promised exemption from.
Now the counterfeit, and after years in something it is very well established, so learn its shape. It says: you are in this because something in you let it in, and other people are protected and you are not. That is vague, it names you rather than an act, and its only instruction is to keep searching for the fault. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and it puts something in your hand to do.
You are not being punished by an absence of protection, and the man who wrote the strongest sentence about deliverance in the New Testament wrote it from a prison (2 Timothy 4:18). The same Spirit is the one who stood with Paul in that cell and stands in this one.
Nothing on this page promises the getting out happens soon. Paul wrote his sentence and was executed not long afterward, and he wrote it anyway, and he was not wrong. What is settled is that the petition is a rescue rather than a fence, that being in it is not evidence of a fault, and that the search you have been running underneath everything was looking for something that was never there.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud. You speak here as somebody in Christ, so the standing behind it belongs to you and was handed over rather than assumed. God had Paul write about deliverance from a prison cell, so speak to the assumption that you were promised a fence. An ambassador speaks the King's word and never his own, and the outcome is His to decide.
- Assumption that I was promised a shield, you are not the petition and you are not what the word means. The Word of God says deliver us from evil, and the word there means to draw somebody out of a thing they are already in.
- Search for the fault that let this in, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture has Paul saying he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion, which is a place he was already inside.
- Father, 2 Timothy 4:18 says the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and a man in a cell wrote it. I say the cry tonight and name what I am asking for, and I thank You that Your Spirit does the drawing out.
2 Timothy 4:18
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