Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.
– Psalm 50:14–15
Oh, I love this chapter in the Psalms. Right before this, we see a powerful picture of God’s sovereignty over all things, his ownership of all things, and the fact that God has no needs.
We have needs. We need breath, we need food, we need water. God has no needs. Everything belongs to him. He is Lord over it all. It’s what he says in Psalm 50:10, “Every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills. All that moves in the field is mine.” He says in Verse 12, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you.” God’s saying, well, one, I don’t get hungry, but even if I were hungry, I wouldn’t be coming to you, for the world and all its fullness are mine. That’s the setup for Psalm 50:14–15 where we read, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.” And even just there, we could stop and meditate on the importance of thanksgiving in our lives, because we are needy people.
Psalm 50:14–15 teaches us to cultivate a heart of thanksgiving.
We need God for everything good in our lives and the world around us, so it is good to pause and thank God for all the good things he provides for us.
This is why the New Testament teaches us to give thanks in all circumstances. I want to encourage you, maybe even after this prayer is over, or just throughout your day or evening, and tomorrow, just spend time in continual thanksgiving. Foster a posture of thanksgiving to the God who supplies all our needs, the God who is the Author of everything good.
And then you get to Verse 15, and God’s Word says, “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you.” What a picture. The God who owns it all, who’s sovereign over it all invites you and me to call upon him when we are in trouble, and he will help us. And then the end of Verse 15 says, “You shall glorify me.” This is the design of God in prayer. We get help, and God receives glory, for his grace, for his mercy, for his love, for his goodness, for all the ways he provides for us. Oh, there’s so much here in Psalm 50 to learn about prayer. Let’s do it.
Oh, God, we thank you for every good thing you have given us, you are giving us right now, God, we thank you for beating hearts and breathing lungs. We thank you for people in our lives who love us and care for us. God, we thank you for every good gift we have, every good thing we enjoy.
Psalm 50:14–15 pictures God as our Provider and Deliverer.
Ultimately, oh, God, we thank you for sending Jesus to die on a cross for us, to forgive us of our sins, to restore us to our relationship with you. God, thank you for restoring us to yourself, for a relationship with you and all that flows from that. God, we pray that you would help us to give thanks in all circumstances, even when we walk through hard, difficult circumstances, to see your goodness, and to give thanks even in the middle of dark and difficult days.
And when we’re in those days, according to your Word in Psalm 50:15, to call upon you and know that you hear us and will help us. God, we need your help in so many different ways in our lives right now, and we praise you for your promise to hear us and help us when we call upon you, and to do so in a way that brings your name great glory as our Provider, our Deliverer, our Protector, our Savior. Oh, God, glorify yourself through your provision in our lives in response to our prayers to you.
Prayer for the Kimr People
And oh, God, we pray like this not only for ourselves. We want to intercede right now for the Kimr people of Sudan, for 200,000 of them, almost all Muslim, most have never heard the good news of your love in Jesus.
God, we intercede, we stand in the gap for the Kimr people of Sudan right now. Please, oh God, help them, save them, deliver them from their sins. Cause the good news of your grace in Jesus to flow to them so that they might know you and enjoy you and glorify you, so they might experience you, the God of Psalm 50, as The One who provides for their every need, ultimately, for restoration to you. God, please may it be so. We pray all this according to your Word with thanksgiving in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
