God's Promise to Long Life

Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him My salvation. ---Psalm 91:14-16

For two weeks, I have been writing on Why We Are Sick, or on the positive side, How to Live a Healthy and Victorious Life! I like the positive title better because as I dissected reasons why Christians are sick I have also been giving pointers on how to think like God wants us to think and not how man has trained us to think! I have found it amazing that while going through these scriptures that everything I have read indicates that God WANTS us to be victorious on this side of heaven.

Our scripture today sums it all up. First, we are to look to Him with honor and love because of who He is. When we do this, He can then deliver us (lift out, carry away to safety, escape). We aren’t to look to Him (or set our Love on Him) so He can be our genie in the bottle, or our magic wand! We look to Him because we love Him for who He is. To do this, we must know His names because they describe His character.

Think of Jehovah Jirah, our Provider, Jehovah Nissi, our Banner that flies over us as we go through our battles in life; Jehovah Rapha, our Healer and about 15 other names. When we know God’s names and understand what He wants to do for us, then He can set us on high. What is meant by setting us on high is, He will keep us safe and set us up where we will be inaccessible! Wow! No matter what we are going through personally, as a family, financially, with different personalities, if we know how much God loves us and we love Him and we know His character through His names, then He will answer us when we call on Him.

How do we call? This is very important to know because a lot of Christians cry (literally) while praying and still don’t get results. Then they say, God is answering through His silence so the answer must be “no.” Well, maybe, but may I suggest that we aren’t approaching God as a Son (or Daughter) of God. How many children go to their fathers or mothers in tears asking if they can have dinner? I don’t think there is one. If we want to go to them asking for dinner, we know there is food in the house, that there is a stove and refrigerator and momma can cook. We knowingly approach them, asking “when,” not “if.”

The original Greek for “call out” means to accost, proclaim, pronounce or address by name. What God wants us to do is to address Him with the name of God that will fit your circumstance. If you need healing, approach Jehovah Rapha, if you need provision, call out to Jehovah Jirah. Then tell Him what He has promised you through the character of His name. You are literally letting God know that YOU KNOW what He is capable of doing and because you are His child, you use language like a child would a father or mother. The scripture says, “and I WILL answer him.”

You will get an answer then. When you know the will of the Father that is where your faith will begin. If you know that you know that God is the Healer, that He wants to see you live a long life, then your faith will begin there and God will reach down to answer.

Tomorrow, we will look at the rest of this verse. Let us practice how to call on God:

Confession: Father, Abba, Daddy. You are my God and Deliverer. You are El Saddai, the One who can meet all my needs. You are able to reach me through the heavens and deliver me from my trouble. I thank you that you love me for who I am and know what I can be. I need your help to achieve the destiny you have for me, so today I declare that I trust you with my circumstances.