Deliverance.

No, not the du-du-duuh-du-du da-da-daah-dah-da kind. I'm talking about the life kind. Deliverance is a word that was brought up in my prayer group tonight. The word intrigued me.

This week, I helped birth a baby. It was great. I had all kinds of fun with the family, and the baaaby was so cute! After this delivery, I began thinking of delivery in a whole new light.

Tonight, it manifested in prayer over the lives of the people in my church; the people who make up my local body, who form just a small member of the collective BODY.

Tonight, as I was praying, God gave me a word picture. It looks like this:


No, this isn't a joke. Yes, I am in nursing school.

But His word picture for me was similarly illustrated. The uterus (I picked a picture that was labeled for all of you who are understandably in the dark about female anatomy :) represented my body. The fetus represented my life; the daughter-of-eve, fallen life that I was born with. The umbilical cord and placenta represented how closely intertwined the two really are. Without my body, my life would have no chance of survival. Without the uterus to supply blood to the placenta, the baby would have no way of surviving.

Moving on, I feel like God impressed on my heart tonight that he wants to deliver me of me. He wants to deliver me of the fetus growing inside of me (not literally guys, I'm not prego... it's a word picture. I repeat just a WORD PICTURE). He wants to deliver me of every manifestation of sin in my life, He wants to deliver me of simply that: of life. Once I am delivered, He wishes to clean me out -- placenta and all -- so as to leave no remnants of my prior life behind.

Once He has delivered me of myself, my life, then He will be capable of implanting a new life in me. A life of joy, of hope, of mercy and grace. A life of forgiveness and everything new. A life that can thrive and grow and develop -- The life which costed Him his Son, He gave for me to attain.

He wants to deliver you of you, and in return, He wants to fill you with something beautiful. Something living. The great news is that while the delivery might be painful -- after all, epidurals aren't exactly available for repenting and turning away from sin -- the delivery isn't up to us. All of our attempts in the world couldn't amount to the delivery of our old life, our old way of living. Only He can do the delivering.

May you live in the light of His deliverance. May you bid farewell to your old manner, the fetus that used to thrive in you. May you allow Him to deliver you from that and may you thrive in the NEW LIFE that He implants in you. This is my hope. This is my prayer for my people.