Gospel Message Day 21

Prayers, Part 5

I was thinking that today, especially after our Institute lesson on Limhi's people and Alma's people escaping from bondage, I would talk about praying for deliverance. I don't usually spend an entire prayer asking for deliverance from something. Very rare occasions, yes. But usually for me a plea for deliverance is within a prayer and not the entire subject.

Deliverance can be from anything--financial debt, illness, nightmares, pain related to broken relationships, loneliness, being single, sorrow, sin. Anything. I don't pray with the expectation that I will be delivered immediately. I know I still have to do my part in being faithful and righteous, in learning to be cheerful in spite of the less appealing circumstances I am enduring. Yet I "know that deliverance is nigh" (LDS Hymn #19 - "We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet"). "Nigh" could be sooner or later, but the Lord promises to deliver us when the timing is right and we have grown beyond what we could have foreseen.

The Lord will enable me to be able to endure whatever my bondage may be, which will strengthen me and my faith until I am eventually but inevitably delivered, whether in this life or the next.