Practicing Prayer: Learning and Living the Lord’s Prayer
Week Eight: Seventh Petition “…and deliver us from evil” – June 7, 2015
Review and Sharing Time
· Solitude and Silence
· Lord's Prayer review:
The LP unveils three dimensions of Christian life:
· A life of devotion
· A life of dependence
· A life of danger
The Seventh Petition
“Deliverance”
“Evil”
Wallace (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics) writes, “Although the KJV renders this “deliver us from evil,” the presence of the article indicates not evil in general, but the evil one himself.”
While this is undoubtedly true, in church history the phrase has also implied general evil, (which itself is never abstract), and so we say:
‘Evil’ is either A) sin, or trouble, or both, or B) the ‘evil one’ who manipulates trouble to induce sin.
A) Two kinds of evil are exposed in the New Testament:
1. The evil of circumstances external to ourselves.
2. The evil of corruption, badness within us, sin.
B) The ‘evil one’:
John 8:44
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
He has explored every outwork of our nature and even the most secret caverns of our soul. He has climbed into the citadel of our heart, and he has lived there; he has searched our hearts’ inmost recesses and dived into its profoundest depths. I suppose there is nothing of human nature that Satan cannot unravel. Though doubtless the biggest fool that ever existed, yet beyond all doubt he is the craftiest of fools.
Spurgeon goes on to define how Satan attacks us:
He will most thoroughly and carefully examine us, and if he shall find us to be, Like Achilles, vulnerable nowhere else but in our heel, he will shoot arrows at our heel.
Satan resists God and resists being unmasked. He operates in multiple spheres, through the principalities and powers of the age.
Deliverance pleaded
Jesus: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15)
“In praying to God to deliver us we acknowledge that God is greater than any foe of God. The power of evil must be admitted and taken seriously, yet not too seriously. Perhaps that is why, though the Lord's Prayer honestly focuses upon trial, temptation, and evil, it never mentions Satan by name.”
(William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us)
We must pray for rescue because we find ourselves in a cosmic struggle. “Just by acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord, bowing to a ruler other than Caesar, and by praising God, not the values of this world, we threaten all that is fearfully arrayed against Christ.” (Willimon and Hauerwaus, Lord, Teach Us)
There is no resistance to Satan other than flight. … Flee—that can indeed only mean, Flee to that place where you find protection and help, flee to the Crucified.
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
How does this petition bring us into conflict with the prevailing assumptions and teaching of contemporary NA culture?
· Individualism
· Materialism
· Health and Wealth
· Technological Progress
· Systems
· ?
Deliverance Won
(John 14:30) Victory over the "prince of this world" was won once for all at the Hour when Jesus freely gave himself up to death to give us his life.
(John 12:31) This Hour “is the judgment of this world, now the prince of this world will be cast out."
(1 John 5:18; context: ‘that you may know you have eternal life.”) “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”
(Galatians 1:4-5) “…who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
(Rev 5.5) “And one of the elders said to me, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.””
(Colossians 2:15) “He (God) disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Christ).”
(Ephesians 2:6) “..and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”
Putting the Two Halves Together
“For good and necessary reasons connected with our Christian growth (James 1:2-12), we shall not be spared all temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13); but if we ask to be spared and watch and pray against Satan's attempts to exploit situations for out downfall, we shall be tempted less than we might have been (Revelation 3:10), and will find ourselves able to cope with temptation when it comes (1 Corinthians 10:13). So don’t be unrealistic in not budgeting for temptation, nor foolhardy enough to court it, but when it comes, do not doubt God's power to deliver from the evil it brings, and to ‘keep you from falling’ (Jude 24) as you pick your way through it. When you are not conscious of temptation, pray “lead us not into temptation”; and when you are conscious of it, pray “deliver us from evil…” (JI Packer growing in Christ 197-8)
Practices
A) Balanced, Biblical Prayer for Deliverance from Evil
Dismissive Obsessive
Truths informing prayer:
· Christ's authority. (Ephesians 1:20-22)
· Our union with him in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 2:6)
· Our instructions for standing against the devil's schemes. (Ephesians 6:10-18)
· A command to be alert and to resist the devil. (1 Peter 5:8-9)
· Satan is a defeated foe and has no ultimate power over us, but he is still active in our lives.
· Dangers: either complacency (the evil one doesn’t really exist or operate against God's people) or terror (bondage to the fear of satan and his attacks).
· From the Catechism: 219 How does God deliver you from evil? “God's Holy Spirit transforms my soul to see and hate evil as he does; then he further delivers me either by removing my trial or by giving me strength to endure it gracefully.”
B) Non-Helpful Practices
1. Forgetting Christ and obsessing over ‘the powers.’
2. Substituting yourself for Christ as the “Warfare Intercessor. ”
a. Web example
b. Another web example
3. “Praying against” rather than “praying for.”
4. Addressing Satan.
5. Exorcism (as in the movies). But, St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great (4th-5th centuries) each penned Exorcism prayers, particularly for those entering the catechumenate (renouncing the devil in our Baptism service)
C) Helpful Practices
1. Praying deliverance and defense based on the might of God (Eph 3:14-21; 6:10-20).
i. Ephesians 6: 10 – 20. How does this help us?
ii. “Without prayer, it would be senseless for us to engage in the struggle for the completion of God's work in the world. We can claim that we are in the middle of spiritual warfare, but that battle is mere make-believe until it becomes real through intense prayer. Armed only with human weapons, our threat is ridiculous to the powers of evil. As we call upon God, however, forces of another size and quality come into play, and our struggle becomes serious. It will not be without effect in history.” (Klaus Bockmuehl Living by the Gospel p.64)
2. Singing the songs of deliverance (Exodus 15).
3. Psalm 91:1-16.
4. Praying the Litany.
5. Fasting as a discipline.