Our Redeemer Lives–and Acts

[Christian Spiritual Director post]

I often pray for others. Well, I pray for some people every day of my life. I pray for others too as I know their needs.

Often our prayer requests are for DELIVERANCE from disease, from financial need, from disrupted relationships, from so many things everyone experiences in a hard world.

As a Christian, I have seen God answer again and again: sometimes quietly, sometimes miraculously. I have personally witnessed deliverance in my life and others’ lives.

But this morning I remembered something that I knew and had forgotten. We live in a fallen world, a world under a curse. Obviously, God does not deliver His children out of all crises; that does not fully happen until the next life.

But He’s here. He’s with us. What He MIGHT do (and often does) is deliver us from the consequences of hard things–the sick get well, the sundered relationship recovers, the financial struggle resolves.

But what He WILL do–always–is even more important: He will heal and redeem our hearts, even amidst the suffering. Sometimes, BECAUSE of suffering.

“God says, ‘Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past,
Wee, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.'” (Isaiah 43:18-19

He has healed me, protected me, delivered me. I was there; I know it. AND…

The biggest thing He ever did for me is save my soul.

And the second biggest thing He does for me was to redeem my heart, so I live with a constant upwelling of joy. He heals my spirit, so even when He does not relieve my circumstances, I am at peace… in Him.

This peace is open to each one of us. Hallelujah.