What makes you worry? What do you fear? Whether it is large or small, God can deliver you.

Psalm 91:3

“For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.” (ESV)

God can deliver from snares

We see one verb in this verse: “deliver.” God will deliver you. That is an action verb. He will take action to protect you by setting you free.

As you go through daily life, it is as though you were a bird flying here and there, up and down, landing on the ground and eating seeds, darting between tree branches. All that sounds beautiful to behold, but life for a bird is not carefree. Hidden on the ground at times are snares of various design. Hanging occasionally in the trees are fine-threaded, nearly invisible nets. And the culprit is the fowler.

A fowler hunts birds (fowl). Snares come in many kinds, but picture one simple variety I found on Youtube. A crate turned upside down is propped up by a stick. Tied to the stick is a trip wire. Placed beneath the crate is a pile of food delectable to the species of bird the fowler is hunting. Leading to the food is a bread trail of more food. You get the idea.

In Psalm 91:3, the fowler and his snare is a metaphor for any sort of trap you can encounter, natural and spiritual. There are financial traps of many kinds. Relationships with the wrong people. Sexual temptations. Fraudulent business deals and consumer scams. Spiritual deceptions, false doctrines, and false teachers. Calamities. Criminals on the sidewalk, at the door, around your home. Accidents. Demons. On and on.

Dozens of times or more every week God delivers you from them. Normally you do not even know you have been delivered. He has taken action to protect you before you even knew you were flying toward danger. He pulled the stick that held up the crate. He took down the birder’s net from between the trees before you flew there.

Sometimes for wise purposes known only to him, he allows you to walk into the snare and be trapped. Alarmed, you cry out to God for help. Then he comes on the scene and lifts the crate that held you captive before the fowler arrives to take you away.

Because the Lord is the Most High, the Almighty, your covenant Lord Yahweh, your refuge and fortress, your God in whom you trust, he will take action to deliver you.

God in action

In Psalm 18:1–19, David dramatically described the deliverances he had experienced:

“I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, and I am saved from my enemies. The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called upon the LORD; to my God I cried for help. From his temple he heard my voice, and my cry to him reached his ears. Then the earth reeled and rocked; the foundations also of the mountains trembled and quaked, because he was angry. Smoke went up from his nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth; glowing coals flamed forth from him. He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under his feet. He rode on a cherub and flew; he came swiftly on the wings of the wind. He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him, thick clouds dark with water. Out of the brightness before him hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds. The LORD also thundered in the heavens, and the Most High uttered his voice, hailstones and coals of fire. And he sent out his arrows and scattered them; he flashed forth lightnings and routed them. Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.”

God can deliver from coronavirus

Now that is God in action! He is not passive, dormant, or distant. The God of action is the one who protects and delivers you no less than King David.

Psalm 91:3 says that the Lord not only delivers you from the snare of the fowler, but also “from the deadly pestilence.” Pestilence is more than a cold, more than a tummy ache. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary says pestilence is “a contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating.”

Think Bubonic Plague, or Ebola. If God can deliver you from that, he can also deliver you from the coronavirus or some other potentially dangerous flu or disease. Psalm 91:3 is a promise for times like these. This is a promise from God that can deliver you not only from disease, but just as importantly—from fear of the disease.

God is big enough to handle microscopic viruses, germs, and parasites. He can protect you from the small as easily as from the large. The God who took down Goliath for David can take down invisible microbes for you. God, the Creator and Sustainer of all, works on the level of the smallest subatomic particles, controlling literally all things: germs, viruses, bacteria, quarks, electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, elements.

He can deliver you from a single, harmful virus cell. Really, he can, and does. The reason you are alive and reading this is the Lord has delivered you countless times over the course of your life from harmful microbes of disease and pestilence without your even knowing it, and probably a few times when you were aware of being healed from some disease by his providential use of your immune system or some medicine. But all health and healing comes ultimately from the Lord—who delivers you.

He protects you by delivering you “from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence” (Psalm 91:3).

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

God’s healing love delights to take action now to fix what is wrong in our lives.

I know someone with a serious medical problem who desperately wants to be healed. She is trying everything the medical profession can offer. Unfortunately, she believes that prayer may offer emotional support but no real help for her physical condition. Prayer is sweet but not powerful and effective (James 5:16).

Do you believe that God loves you in a way that includes not only sympathy and good intentions but also compassionate action, even supernatural action when necessary? Do you believe God loves you in a way that can change your situation and meet your need now?

God’s healing love here and now

This was the question when Jesus spoke with a grieving woman whose brother had died days before. He was already buried in a tomb. Yet when Jesus met her, he spoke an astonishing promise: “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).

The woman, named Martha, responded cautiously: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24).

She believed that God could fix the problem in the future when God restores all things and inaugurates the eternal kingdom. But she was not at that point able to believe that Jesus meant to say in that moment he was able and willing to raise the already decomposing body of her brother Lazarus from the dead.

Yet that was precisely what Jesus intended. For he then said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26)

Jesus said, “I am the resurrection” not “I will someday be the resurrection” (though that is also of course true). He wanted Mary to know that his love included the current and immediate fixing of problems. His love is a healing love now, a saving love now, a delivering love now, a restoring love now. Jesus’ love is the answer for our needs here and now.

It is one thing to believe he is able to heal us. It is another to believe he is willing to heal us. It is another still to believe he can heal us now.

Jesus continually expressed God’s healing love

Jesus made that clear years earlier at the beginning of his public ministry. He went to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth on the Sabbath, and when it was time to read Scripture, “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:17–19)

Emotional support is good; healing is better. Jesus healed people everywhere he went, the blind, the lame, the deaf, the crippled, the dead. He delivered people from demons. His mission was search and rescue.

“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matthew 14:14)

“Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.’” (Mat 15:32) And Jesus proceeded to perform the miracle of feeding thousands of people from seven loaves of bread and a few fish.

On another occasion, meeting two blind men, “Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him” (Mat 20:34).

And so it is now. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We may believe in a small God who loves us but can’t or won’t do anything in the here and now to change our needy situations.

God’s way: He has the love of a big God who is able and willing to rescue us in our lifetime from whatever is broken in us. The timing is his, and the answer may require our patience, but he invites us to pray and believe for immediate answers.