Psalm 116 There is a repeated phrase in this Psalm, “I will call upon Him”. This is in the context of dire difficulties, difficulties such as could result in death. The Psalmist is expressing God’s deliverance and this is to be seen as spiritual deliverance.
Three aspects of prayer:
- All prayer is against the backdrop of eternal salvation, verses 1-3, when the believer comes to the edge of hell. Believers need to know that when they go to prayer that we are there only because God has rescued them and delivered them through Christ. They are able and privileged to come to God in prayer through the redemption of Jesus Christ, verse 13. In all prayer there is an expression of the salvation of God.
- All prayer is in a life-long setting, verse 2. Salvation is not short-term, it is not experience-based as so much of modern evangelicalism asserts. It is for a lifetime. The reason is God Himself and His work of salvation, Psalm 42:7, 8.
- All prayer is in a setting of amazing deliverances. There are great difficulties that call on continued prayer, but God gives great deliverances. Many are the difficulties of the ones God loves, but He delivers them out of them all, verse 8. Believers have a great responsibility in thought and prayer not to live down in the realm of the difficulties but in the perspective of God’s deliverance in those difficulties, verses 15, 16.