Teach Me to War | Part 1
We All Want Deliverance
We all want deliverance. We all want freedom. We all want to be set free. But the hard part is accepting how that deliverance is going to come. Deliverance is easy for God. It is easy for the Holy Spirit, but for us as human beings it can be a very difficult thing.
Our tendency is to want a better way. We want deliverance to be miraculous. We want the fireworks, the huge display, heaven coming down and God setting us free immediately. Sometimes it can happen that way, but most of the time deliverance is something that we have to work through. Not in our own strength, but by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in us and begin breaking down those things that are in us.
This is where I want to begin, because Jesus came to bring deliverance.
Isaiah 61:1 says, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.”
These are the words that Jesus read in the synagogue in Nazareth at the beginning of His ministry. Imagine that for a moment. An entire people had been waiting for the Messiah to come. They had been waiting for the Christ, the Son of David, to make His arrival. Jesus takes the scroll, opens it to this passage in Isaiah and reads these words. He hands the scroll back and tells them, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
You would think they would have been excited. You would think they would have rejoiced that the One they had been waiting for was finally there. But that isn’t what happened. At first they looked at Him almost incredulously, as though they were asking, “Who does He think He is?” Eventually they became so angry that they took Jesus to the edge of a hill intending to throw Him off.
There is something important in this for us. We all want deliverance. We all want freedom. But the hard part can be accepting the One who has come to deliver us and allowing Him to do it His way.
Why Do We Refuse the Saviour?
Why is it so hard for us to accept the deliverance that Jesus wants to give us? Why do we refuse the Saviour who wants to give us deliverance? The answer is very simple. We love our sin.
Jesus says in John 3:19–21, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” He goes on to say that everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come to the light because they do not want their deeds to be exposed, but the one who does truth comes to the light.
As sinners, we love our sin. We want to be in our sin. We take pleasure in it and embrace it. But as Christians, we are supposed to be those who have stepped out of darkness, out of sin, and into light and truth. This is where there should be a difference. The sinner loves his sin, but the Christian should hate it and run from it.
This is what Jesus is saying. Everyone who does evil hates the light and refuses to come to the light, but the one who does truth comes to the light. If we really want deliverance, then we have to be willing to allow the light of Christ to expose what is actually in our hearts.
Delivered From the Power of Darkness
Paul tells us in Colossians 1:12–14 that the Father has made us partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, and that He “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins.”
I want you to see something in this passage. We have been delivered from the power of darkness and brought into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. In that kingdom there is forgiveness of sins. Through the blood of Jesus Christ we have redemption and forgiveness, but we have to step out of darkness and into the light.
When we refuse to acknowledge and confess our sin, we are refusing to bring those things into the light. Whether it is pornography, lust, alcohol, malicious thoughts, hatred, or whatever else it may be, if it is sin, it has to be brought into the light.
What does that look like? It means being honest before God. It means coming before Him and acknowledging what is actually in our hearts. In my own life that has meant praying, “God, I am a sinner. I have been involved in pornography. I have a lustful heart. I am a proud and arrogant man. I am religious. I am cold. I am hard. These are things, God, that I do not want in my heart. Lord, please deliver me.”
When we refuse to acknowledge our sin and refuse to confess it, we begin walking back into darkness. Instead of allowing the light of Christ to expose what is in us, we hold onto those things and find ourselves in rebellion toward God.
Our Sin Grieves the Heart of God
When we sin and refuse to come to repentance, we grieve the Spirit of God. This was something that the Lord began to show me in a way that I had never really understood before. My wife and I were going through In Christ’s Image Training, by Francis Frangipane, when I began to understand something about the character and heart of God that completely changed the way I looked at my own sin.
We know that God is Lord God Almighty. He created the universe by the power of His word. In Genesis 1, darkness covered the face of the deep, and God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. He is the God who created all things, who tells the oceans where to stop, who hangs the earth upon nothing, and before whom we are incredibly small.
For a long time, I think that made it difficult for me to understand how anything I did could possibly hurt God. He is Almighty God. Who am I that I could do anything that would affect Him?
But then I came across Ezekiel 6:9. In that passage God speaks about His people turning away from Him and going after their idols. He describes Himself as being broken because of their unfaithful hearts and the things after which their eyes had gone.
That began to show me something about God that I had not understood before. Our sin grieves His heart.
That truth would eventually become very personal for me.
What Are We Keeping in the Darkness?
Before we go any further, I think this is something each of us needs to ask ourselves. Is there something in my life that I know is sin, but I am still holding onto it? Is there something that I don’t want brought into the light?
Jesus came to set the captives free. There is forgiveness through His blood, and there is deliverance from the power of darkness. But we cannot continue embracing the darkness while saying that we want the freedom He came to give us.
We need to be honest with God. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to show us what is actually in our hearts and be willing to acknowledge it when He does. Whatever He brings to the light, we need to bring before Him in repentance and ask Him to deliver us.
In the next part of this series, I want to share something that the Lord showed me personally about my own sin. It changed the way I understood what my sin was doing, not only to my marriage and to my wife, but to the heart of God Himself.
Continue the Teach Me to War Series
Next: Part 2 — My Sin Was Hurting More Than My Marriage
Watch the Teaching
This series is adapted from Teach Me to War marriage teaching. You can watch the original teaching here: