This passage is a great encouragement to believers for the times when we are faced with circumstances that we are unable to confront in our own strength and with our own resources. Like Jehoshaphat, we also will cry out to the Lord in prayer with words something like his: “We are powerless
before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You”.
The lesson in this passage is not that God will miraculously remove every burden, obstacle, or adverse circumstance that we face in life after we have brought our prayer for deliverance to Him. There will be times when we experience various sufferings as part of God’s sovereign plan and purpose for our lives, as He works to bring about in us a share in the sufferings of His Son Jesus Christ (John 12:24-26, Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 4:12-13, 19, others). There will be times in our lives when adverse circumstances come upon us, and it can be said of us:
All this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten You, And we have not dealt falsely with Your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
And our steps have not deviated from Your way, Yet You have crushed us in a place of jackals And covered us with the shadow of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God Or extended our hands to a strange god, Would not God find this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
But for Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. (Psalm 44:17-22)
And again, there will be times in our lives when it can be said of us: For You have tried us, O God;
You have refined us as silver is refined. You brought us into the net;
You laid an oppressive burden upon our loins. You made men ride over our heads;
We went through fire and through water,
Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance. (Psalm 66:10-12)
When considering the circumstances of our own lives, we may feel like we are trapped in a “net” of sorrows brought about by difficult and painful burdens, which God Himself has assigned for us (Psalm 66:11). But the end intended by our sovereign and loving God is that one day, in His
time and according to His plan and purpose for our lives, we will be brought out “into a place of abundance”.