- Deliver
(We are at Psalm 50, one-third of the way through all the Psalms, and we have already uncovered 111 promises. How many promises has God given to us just in the Book of Psalms? Do the math. We truly have an awesome God.)
Psalm 50:15
And call upon me in the day of trouble:
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
This is conditional promise: if you call upon me, then I will deliver you. God may or may not deliver those who do not call upon Him, but the Promise for those who pray and trust the Lord is certain. We who call upon the Lord in the day of trouble are those who trust in the Lord already (or we wouldn’t pray). We can be certain that the Lord will keep His promise and deliver us from the day of trouble when we pray.
The Lord Jesus Christ delivers us from eternal death and hell and He delivers us from bondage to Sin and Satan. Spiritual and eternal deliverance has been securely won and will not be lost. But our Lord still commands us to pray often, like every day without ceasing: “Deliver us from evil.” Jesus has delivered us once for all time, but daily deliverances from different days of trouble are still needed.
Therefore we pray that the Lord will deliver us from the specific trouble, or need, or problem of the day. We usually have enough troubles that our prayer life should be kept rather busy. We neglect to pray about all our troubles, woes, and cares every day for many reasons, but one reason we do not pray daily to be delivered from trouble is that we do not really believe God will deliver “little old me” from my “little old trouble.” That is why God gave us more than one promise about deliverance after calling on Him; He wants to encourage us to really trust Him: He hears, He cares, He delivers.
When He has delivered us we will glorify Him. This sequence will fill up many of our days: get in trouble—pray to the Lord—be delivered—glorify God. That is not at all a bad way to spend the days of our lives. We know progress is being made when we spend more time praising and thanking God than praying for deliverance from trouble. We get into trouble because of sin, either our own or someone else’s or the curse on the world in general or the curse of death. God entered our sin-cursed world of toil and trouble to deliver us and to restore us to Himself. The natural result and normal course of life would be to glorify God constantly; one day we will glorify God constantly because trouble will be non-existent and deliverance will be unnecessary. Glory will be all that is left. But this day: glorify God for deliverances.