PROVO, Utah — While reading many scriptural stories of deliverance from hardship, whether armies or bondage or sin, Rebekah Ellsworth Kimball has noticed commonalities among them.
“One of the most striking things to me about those stories not only was the power of God and His ability to deliver but also how consistent were the things that the people did preceding that deliverance.”
A former manager of strategic and audience support for Seminaries and Institutes of Religion, Kimball taught a class as part of BYU Education Week 2024 in Provo, Utah, on Aug. 22. She presented on “God’s Deliverance in Our Troubled Times” and explained efforts needed to be delivered from hardship.
This was one of more than 1,000 classes at the yearly conference, one of the largest continuing education programs in the country. Participants gathered Aug. 19-23 in classes and keynote addresses to learn from Church leaders, BYU faculty, experts of various fields, and seminary and institute instructors.
5 prerequisites for deliverance
Kimball noted five precursors and prerequisites for deliverance:
1. Prayer: After the Jaredites set sail across the ocean in handcrafted barges, the tempests buried them in the depths of the sea. Yet, “when they were encompassed about by many waters they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again upon the top of the waters” (Ether 6:7).
Kimball noted: “In the scriptures, water is often a symbol of chaos. So the Jaredites, like some of us can feel, are buried in chaos, buried in turmoil. And it’s the prayer of faith to God that brings them back on top of that.”
2. Repentance: In Hebrew, the word “repent” is “shuv,” meaning “to turn” or “to return.” Repentance, then, requires a turning away from sin and a turning toward God.
“We have to repent if we want to be delivered,” said Kimball. “I don’t know of any significant stories in scripture where the people get to do whatever they want and still get delivered miraculously. I don’t know of those stories. I know a lot where the people humble themselves or repent and are delivered.”
3. Humility: In the Old Testament, Samuel urged the children of Israel to forsake idols to be delivered from their enemies, the Philistines. If they “put away the strange gods” and return to the Lord, Samuel promised, He would deliver them (1 Samuel 7:3).
The Israelites obeyed, and their armies were given the Lord’s help to overcome the Philistines. Kimball asked: “What are the ‘strange gods’ in your life that you might need to put away in order to be fully committed to the God of Israel?”
She continued: “We have to have Him be our God. And that, for me, is the message of the Old Testament.”
4. Making and keeping covenants: While the children of Israel were enslaved by the Egyptians in the book of Exodus, “God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24).
This sentiment is echoed when the Lord calls Moses to free the Israelites: “I have remembered my covenant” (Exodus 6:5).
Kimball said: “We have to both choose to make those covenants and choose to keep them. And His promise is as we choose to keep them, that He will remember us as He did the children of Israel, and He will deliver us.”
5. Faith and trust in the Lord: Alma told his son Shiblon in the Book of Mormon: “As much as ye shall put your trust in God even so much ye shall be delivered out of your trials, and your troubles, and your afflictions” (Alma 38:5).
So deliverance, said Kimball, comes to the degree that one puts trust in God.
2 ways God delivers His children
There are two main ways that God delivers His children from trials, said Kimball:
By empowering them. In Mosiah 24, Alma and his people cried out to the Lord for deliverance from bondage. This deliverance didn’t come immediately, but rather “the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease” (Mosiah 24:15).
Kimball said: “It wasn’t that the burden was made lighter. It was that they were made stronger. In the strength of the Lord, they were able to bear the burden until they were ultimately delivered.”
By using others. In April 2010, then-President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency, shared a story of a statue of Christ being damaged in World War II. Experts repaired most of the statue, but the hands could not be fixed. In response, a sign was added: “You are my hands.”
“I testify of a God of deliverance,” said Kimball, “but a God that can deliver us in many ways. He can deliver us with fire out of heaven. He can deliver us by empowering us. And He can deliver us through the hands of others. ... May we do our part in that deliverance process.”
