For the minister, a frequent confession from those needing healing or freedom is: “God Won’t Deliver me.” Most of the time, the statement is made at the beginning of their journey or right before a breakthrough. It can be frustrating, but entertaining the lie that God won’t deliver exposes a root that needs to be addressed for total deliverance to take place.
Popular confessions that go along with the lie God doesn’t deliver:
- “Why won’t He heal me?”
- “Why won’t He listen to me?”
- “I’ve done everything to be free, but He won’t move!”
- “I’ve never seen Him free anyone, therefore, He does not deliver any longer.”
- “He stopped freeing people after His disciples left. I cannot be free.”
When working with people to be set free and healed, an underlying lie that God won’t deliver them can rob them of their hope and faith and make them feel that they are the exception. The lie is an assault on His identify.
The root issue to the lie: God Won’t Deliver
Why does the lie that God won’t deliver seem like the truth? Most people have had repeated disappointments and failures. They may have never lived in an environment of hope. When we say that God will deliver them, it may not even be that they don’t want to believe, they may have a hard time envisioning freedom because they’ve never seen it modeled.
One of the women we ministered to was told from her father he wished she hadn’t been born. As she grew, she experienced the grossest kinds of trauma and rejection. She married an abusive man hoping to finally be loved. After years of relationship failures, the hope she would ever be truly wanted was dashed to pieces.
When she first heard that she could be free from the rejection of the past, feel God’s love, and even be loved by others, it sounded like a fairy tale and way too good to be true. The thought angered her. She was afraid to even hope that God would deliver her because she didn’t think she could bare the disappointment if it never happened.
Proverbs 13:12
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
The accusations and opinions that God doesn’t deliver pivots on a lack of understanding of Who He is, what He does, and how He does it! The root issue of the lie is simply not knowing the truth. People contrast their experience with what the Word says and often lean to what they know from the past. They’re not looking at the Word clearly if they think they cannot be free.
A Word study on the miracles and compassion of Jesus will help clear up a lot of the misconceptions about Him
The Defense of God’s Character
When we know someone’s character, it is a lot easier to detect a lie about the person. As we study the Word, we see many examples that our God has some wonderful character traits! One of my favorite things about Him is that He doesn’t pick the most impactful people for cool jobs as humans do. He doesn’t choose the Goliaths as much as the teenage shepherds, the farmers, and even the donkeys!
Isaiah 55:9
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
When we agree with the lie that He won’t deliver or heal because we are unworthy, we are in direct opposition to His Word. The enemy doesn’t deliver. The enemy lies. Jesus never does. Read the Word and discover He is by nature a healer and deliverer.
The Reason the Lie, “God Won’t Deliver,” Seeds
It all goes back to the garden when the serpent first began to attack God’s character. The only reason that the fabrication worked was that Eve matched her faith with the lie. It can be pretty tempting to believe lies when our bodies are in pain, and our minds are in torment!
Sampling of accusations:
- “If God was a good God, then He wouldn’t let this happen.”
- “If He loved me then He would have already moved.”
- “What about the bad things that happen? If He wanted for it to stop, He’d do it.”
The accusations can be compelling to our fallen flesh. No one who knows His true character of love, mercy, justice, grace, and kindness would ever attribute those actions to Him. They would know that false accusations about Him is in the enemy’s wheelhouse of tricks.
The problem is that when the flesh or the enemy begin whispering lies about God, it feels compelling. He will line up the so-called evidence and present them with a convincing fashion. We must not heed the lies no matter how overwhelming or real it seems. Our God is mighty and powerful. Lies are nothing to Him. The enemy is nothing to Him, and if we will trust in God, He will show us the miracle of breaking bondages and lies!
Pride at the center of the lies
Hidden Accusations toward God
I’ve heard this statement from well-meaning people plenty of times: “Lisa, I don’t know why He won’t help me. I have prayed, fasted, and done everything. Why isn’t He doing anything, He doesn’t care!”
Those who say such things do not see is that they believe they are more righteous and more active than God. The statement is a form of veiled pride birthed out of pain. The pain prepared rich soil for the enemy to sow and reap accusations.
The accusation, when dissected, implies that God is unwilling to help, that the person is more righteous than God because they’re doing their part when He isn’t. In addition, the charge that He does not care is one-hundred percent error.
1 Peter 5:6-8
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
“God Doesn’t Heal” lies are spurred on by error
Another statement I’ve heard is: “After years of seeking Him, I believe that no one is as tormented as I am. I’ve met thousands of people and no one is as bad as I am or as ignored by God as me.” Again, their closeness to the pain has likely made their eyes dim and hearing dull. The spirit of error has twisted the truth and made what could not possibly be true make sense.
I have to confess that when I was in the throes of a five-year torment of daily multiple muscle cramps all over my body, I wondered why my deliverance was taking so long. After I was healed and my vision cleared, I remembered how God wanted to heal me but I was too prideful to receive it. I wouldn’t have believed that before healing, but I certainly knew it was true afterwards.
How does a person break the lie that God won’t deliver?
- Get to know God. Through the Bible and through prayer, we can learn about Him in a way that will break the most powerful lies. Video: four things that come through knowing the Father.
- Pray! Say to God, “Show me the lies! Help me to recognize a lie like I recognize my face when I see it in the mirror. Tell me the truth and help me to open my emotions, heart, and soul to let the truth go down deep and grow in me!”
- Say out loud what is going on in your head and ask someone who knows the truth to help process.
- Write down the truth! Use a journal or the worksheet in the Deliverance Companion book to write down truths. When a lie comes up, begin speaking the truth! Put James 4:7 into action!
- Come out of agreement. Study the Word and if you have believed that God does not heal as a part of your doctrine, renounce it. Ask God to show the truth and then speak it. Believe in HIs character.
Help! My go-to is believing the lie!
Every building that has longevity has a solid foundation. Our foundation as believers is that God doesn’t lie. His thoughts to us are good. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus paid a monumental price to pray for our freedom, healing, wholeness, and salvation! Our Savior has nothing to gain by unnecessarily withholding from us. It makes no sense.
Psalm 139:17-18 ESV
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.
We can start from the one truth that God is not evil and His thoughts are really really great! Let me explain through an analogy: There is one truth about my car that is the same. If it ever breaks down, if the tires deflate, or if the engine blows, I know that the color of the paint on the car had nothing to do with it. Its operation has zero to do with the paint. If a mechanic sat around wondering if the reason the car stalled was that the paint was peeling, I’d get a new mechanic! In the same way, we are wasting a lot of time connecting dots that cannot ever connect!
When we minister to people, we can do so knowing it’s His will to have compassion on them. If a spirit refuses to leave or if a person isn’t healed right away, God is never at fault. I’m not saying to point a finger at the person and accuse them, but there is something amiss, and it isn’t God’s fault. Ever. Read the article: 7 Reasons You Aren’t Free
He is faithful! It may look like He is not because of what we think, feel, experience, or sense. However, if we can pivot on the one beautiful unchanging quality of God to be just, wise, and good, then we can axe out a lot of the accusations hurled at us by the enemy.
Getting to know Him
The video above is a great teaching on the character of God to produce in you an epic end! Watching how He works in scripture and through life will help your perspective of how trustworthy He really is!
In addition to getting to know Him and refusing lies about Him, I’ve included a prayer below to help you or someone you are ministering to get started wiping the debris off the foundation and start at ground zero. Let Him be Who He is. He will do what He says He will do and you will find Him faithful!
Prayer
“Heavenly Father, I repent for believing lies about you. I forgive myself for believing them, but I want you to know I do not want to believe bad things about You. You are the One who loved me first. I renounce the lie that you are aloof, that you don’t want to help, that you’ll help anyone but me, and that things will never change. My hope has been bruised, but I give You my hope right now. I give You permission to remove every lie I believe. I choose to trust You for the navigation, orchestration, and timing of the breakthroughs in my life. Give me eyes to see what You are doing and ears to hear You as well. I hand my life over to You in the precious name of Jesus.”
Declaration
I have renounced my unbelief and the lies I have believed. My allegiance is with the Lord Jesus Christ! I refuse the accusations against His character. I command every lie, every unclean spirit, and every hindrance to my victory to go right now, in the name of Jesus. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I’m done blaming the wrong One for the way things are. My God is well able to deliver me, but IF He does not, I still will not bow to doubt, unbelief, and any part of the schemes of the enemy.
You Can Do It!
It may take some time to change the way our thoughts like to gather in the doubt zone. We can use Phillipans 4:8 to guide us in what to think about! Let’s put the real liar in his place! In doing so, the enemy will lose his place to speak into our lives and work his deception.
