Verse 1:

Deliver me out of the sadness
Deliver me from all of the madness
Deliver me courage to guide me
Deliver me Your strength inside me

Chorus:
All of my life I’ve been in hiding
Wishing there was someone just like You
Now that You’re here now that I’ve found You
I know that You’re the one to pull me through

Verse 2:
Deliver me loving and caring
Deliver me giving and sharing
Deliver me this cross that I’m bearing

Bridge:
Oh deliver me
Oh deliver me oh deliver me

Outro:
Jesus, Jesus how I trust You
How I’ve proved You o’er and o’er
Jesus, Jesus precious Jesus
Deliver me
Come and pull me through

This song hit the music scene in the ancient days of 1998, written and sang by Sarah Brightman, (I know…who?)  sadly for her career, I don’t remember it or her.  In 2003, David Crowder pulled it out, dusted it off and made it famous on his album Illuminate.  (Any younger readers I may have are also asking, “Who?) 😉  I promise, he is still kicking, although perhaps not as high…and making music.

Over the past several days,  maybe a week, these lyrics have been running like a feedback loop in my brain.  When I have been working alone in my home or driving in the car or lying awake at night –

Deliver me out of the sadness; deliver me from all of the madness…

When I hear of yet another shooting in my city or visit my mom in the nursing home and she tells me again how much she hates life –

Deliver me loving and caring; deliver me giving and sharing…

Sometimes this life feels overwhelming, there seems to be too much suffering and killing and senseless dying.  And adults are hurting kids or kids are hurting themselves or killing each other, and moms and dads or grandparents develop dementia and no one wants to be around them anymore because they drive everyone crazy, and it’s just too sad.  Besides, who wants to be reminded of our own mortality?  (I have two friends walking the same road I am with this and there are no easy answers to this. None.)

Deliver me courage to guide me; deliver me your strength inside me…

But it’s Christmas, and don’t we all want a ‘perfect’ Christmas?  We whip out the smiles and make the Christmas cookies, and give money to the Salvation Army dude, but then all the kids aren’t coming home, so that shoots the ‘perfect’ Christmas down.  You said yes to another thing when your body said no; the stress is too great, the smiles are waning, and was that another murder I heard on the local news?!…at times, my heart is weighted down with the heaviness of it all.

Deliver me this cross that I’m  bearing…

But, when it seems as though the darkness is encroaching at a stifling rate, when it looks like the enemy is winning, when circumstances all around me are screaming that the prince of this world is in control, I am reminded – always reminded –

Now that You’re here, now that I’ve found You, I know that You’re the one to pull me through…

Jesus, Jesus how I trust You, how I’ve proved You o’er and o’er; Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus

Throughout history, sadly, God’s people generally doubt before we trust that He will deliver.  Daniel and his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, are some of the few examples found in Scripture who had complete faith in their Deliverer from Day One, (Daniel 3:17-18).  So complete was the faith of Daniel’s friends in the  Lord as their Deliverer that when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace to view the three Jewish men being burned alive, (kind of sick, right?) due to their refusal to worship him as a god, he saw four men loose and walking around, not bound as the three had been when cast into the fire.  Their Deliverer had joined them in their fiery trial.

Daniel had his own set of personal trials, as well.  He had to interpret dreams for the king, explain some very unflattering writing to the king, which appeared on his dining room wall during a feast, and then later was thrown into the lion’s den for failing to bow down to another egotistical king’s statute, which declared himself god.  Daniel’s Deliverer closed the lion’s mouth, by the way.  Each time Daniel’s faith was challenged, his trust in God’s faithfulness withstood the test, (Daniel 4-5).

“…God is never limited by lack or restricted by the expected…That is always the secret to the abundant life: to believe that God is where you doubt He can be.” (The Greatest Gift, Ann Voskamp)

According to Voskamp’s description of the secret to the abundant life, I’d say that Daniel possessed it with quiet aplomb.  He and his friends believed God to BE where most any of us would have doubted Him to be…inside a burning furnace that had been heated seven times hotter due to the king’s fury, for instance, or inside a hungry lion’s den.

But do I possess that secret?  Do I believe that God is where I doubt He can be?  Do you?

For each of us that could be a different answer, couldn’t it?  We could quibble about God being able to deliver from the violence of urban cities as opposed to, say, the violence destroying entire countries or regions.  We can make Him a tame God who fits inside the parameters we’ve set, but then, what kind of god is that?  I want to believe in the God who revealed Himself throughout Scripture as a Deliverer; He’s all over the place in there, delivering people right and left, certainly not limited by circumstances!

And He wants to do the same for us, each time we need Him to be our Deliverer.

The  Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. (Psalm 18:2)

You are my hiding place; you shall preserve me from trouble; you shall surround me with songs of deliverance. (Psalm 32:7)

He has delivered us from the  power of darkness and conveyed us into  the kingdom of the Son of His love, (Col.1:13). 

If you need a Deliverer, He is awaiting your call…He’s really good at the unexpected and impossible.