“Deliver us from evil” —Luke 11:4
Do you long to be free of the anxieties, fears, and strongholds that hinder your life?
When a pastor says, “It’s time to release strongholds,” we tend to take an inventory, listing our mistakes and failures. We usually come up short of abundant life, which is discouraging.
But our biggest strongholds are not rooted in our actions but in unforgiveness, bitterness, and misunderstanding of who we are. Those negative emotions lead to mental, emotional, and physical stress. Freedom and joy are trampled upon and shoved into a hopeful, someday closet of our lives that we are afraid to open.
Our destructive emotions and actions are usually rooted in deep wounds and painful memories that become what the Bible calls a “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12:15).
Asking God to reveal areas of pain and bitterness is not always about confronting people. That typically doesn’t work. We need to release forgiveness and allow the bitterness to die (sometimes you need a counselor or prayer partners to help you).
Jesus set the example when He forgave those who hurt Him while He was being crucified. He cried out, “Father, forgive them!” and released them into God’s hands (Luke 23:34).
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, one of His most powerful statements was, “Deliver us from evil” (Luke 11:4).
The original word “deliver” is roumai, defined as current. The root word, rew, means “to flow.“1
Evil is like a current flowing through our lives, strangling us with bitterness. It’s like being tasered — jolted by a lie, burned by a lie, then wounded too much to let it go.
Being delivered from evil breaks the current of evil in our lives and allows the Holy Spirit to flow. You break the current by rejecting it as a lie.
Prayer and fasting activate our longing to be free and help us let go of unforgiveness and bitterness. Then the Holy Spirit can flow into our lives like currents of living water, freeing us to love, forgive, and hear God’s voice with clarity.
We can experience what Jesus described when He declared, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
