A Word in Season: Calling Upon God (Psalm 50:15)

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Perhaps you've prayed more in the last few days than you've prayed for a very long time.

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Perhaps you've prayed in the last few days and you've never really prayed before. Trouble does that to us.

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It drives us outside of ourselves. It exposes our sinfulness, our weakness, our frailty, and it makes us look for someone or something who can help us.

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It underlines the fact that God certainly does not depend upon us, but we really do depend upon him.

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And that's why in Psalm 50 and verse 15, the psalmist says, This is

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God's encouragement to his people. He's reminding them that the relationship that he has with them is of him as the all -sufficient

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God and them as the needy and dependent people. And it's the day of trouble that particularly sends his people to God.

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Yes, we ought to pray at all times, but the day of trouble is a time to call upon God in a distinct way, to cry out to him, to express our dependence on him, to declare our utter need of him, to communicate by the petitions that we bring and the spirit in which we bring them that we have been reminded, perhaps more deeply than before, of just what it means to need

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God in our distress. And the Lord has promised that when we pray to him in that way, he will deliver us.

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Now, he has not promised precisely how he will deliver us or when he will deliver us.

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His wisdom, his goodness, his mercy, all of these things will come into play.

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But he has promised this deliverance, this salvation, this mercy toward us in this distinct way.

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And so we now need to bring our troubles to God. Perhaps it is our own sins that bring us to God.

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Perhaps the circumstances in which we're living at the moment have caused certain frictions or brought certain transgressions bubbling up to the surface, perhaps being pinned in with other people if you're in quarantine of some kind at the moment or if the country in which you live is locked down.

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Those things will press in upon you and there'll be things that you're tempted to that perhaps under normal circumstances would never have been a trouble.

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Perhaps it's afflictions of body. Perhaps there's sickness in your home, sickness in your family, sickness in your own flesh.

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Perhaps it's the environment generally in which you live. Perhaps there are distinct pressures now that are pressing in upon you or the work that you're called to do and fears and distresses and sorrows perhaps maybe heaping up around you.

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God has his ways and means of delivering his people from their troubles.

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We might even say that ultimately death itself is what brings us out of all grief and distress into the very presence of the

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Most High God. So call upon God in the day of trouble and he will deliver you.

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And there's a consequence to that, that you and I should when delivered glorify him.

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One of the tragedies is that so often when we pray to God we forget then to come back and record before God the mercies that we have received.

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There's a story told about the Lord Jesus in the

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Gospels of how he healed a number of lepers but only one came back to give thanks to God for his healing to ascribe glory to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. That's precisely what answered prayer should do. When God delivers us we should be very quick to testify of his mercies to record that it is him and not we ourselves who have brought us out of sorrow and into joy, out of darkness and into light.

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So as we face whatever trials and troubles this day may bring whether they come up from within or in from without it is good for us now to call upon the name of the

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Lord and to look to him for our deliverance and when he does us that good to raise our hearts and our voices before men and before God in songs of praise and thanksgiving testifying that it is all of him that we know this safety.