What If God Has Been Delivering You From Traps You Never Even Saw?
Have you ever looked back over your life and realized:
That could have gone very differently.
Maybe a relationship ended that you desperately wanted to keep.
Maybe an opportunity fell apart.
Maybe somebody unexpectedly changed their mind.
Maybe something you had carefully planned simply would not come together.
Maybe you were delayed.
Redirected.
Rejected.
Interrupted.
At the time, none of it felt like protection.
It felt like disappointment.
But years later, with information you didn’t have then, you could finally see something you couldn’t see while you were standing in the middle of it.
God may have been protecting you from something you didn’t even know was there.
Psalm 91:3 gives us an extraordinary picture of that kind of deliverance:
“Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.”— Psalm 91:3 KJV
We tend to concentrate on the word deliver.
But perhaps we should spend some time looking at the word snare.
Because a snare has one purpose:
To catch something that doesn’t know it’s walking into a trap.
What Is the Snare of the Fowler?
A fowler was someone who caught birds.
And unlike a hunter openly chasing his prey, the fowler could use traps, nets, bait, and snares.
The entire strategy depended upon concealment.
If the bird clearly recognized the trap, the trap wouldn’t be very effective.
The snare had to look harmless.
Normal.
Safe.
Perhaps even desirable.
There might be bait involved—something attractive enough to draw the bird toward the very thing designed to capture it.
And suddenly Psalm 91:3 becomes much more interesting.
Because the danger described here isn’t merely something frightening charging toward us.
It is danger we may not recognize as danger.
That’s a completely different kind of threat.
Some Danger Looks Like Danger
There are circumstances where we know immediately that something is wrong.
We recognize the threat.
We see the problem.
We understand why we need God’s protection.
But some things don’t arrive looking dangerous.
Sometimes they look like opportunities.
Relationships.
Promotions.
Friendships.
Financial possibilities.
Open doors.
Ideas.
Invitations.
Things we’ve prayed for.
Things we’ve wanted.
Things that appear perfectly harmless from where we’re standing.
And this is where our limited perspective becomes important.
We can only make decisions based upon what we can see and what we know.
God is not limited by either.
The Bird Doesn’t Know It’s a Trap
Think about the bird for a moment.
It isn’t flying toward something thinking:
There’s a trap. I think I’ll step into it.
If it understood what was happening, it would avoid it.
That’s what makes the image so powerful.
The danger exists independently of the bird’s awareness of it.
And perhaps that is true in our lives more often than we realize.
We tend to think we need God’s protection primarily from dangers we recognize.
But what about the ones we don’t?
What about conversations we never heard?
Intentions we couldn’t know?
Circumstances developing somewhere beyond our awareness?
Consequences we couldn’t possibly foresee?
People whose motives weren’t what they appeared to be?
Decisions that looked harmless but would have carried us somewhere we never intended to go?
What if some of God’s protection has happened completely outside our awareness?
We Usually Recognize Protection Only When We Recognize the Danger
If a car nearly hits us and misses, we may immediately say:
“God protected me!”
Why?
Because we saw the car.
We understood the danger.
We saw what almost happened.
But suppose God protected us from something we never saw.
Would we thank Him for that?
Probably not.
Not because we’re ungrateful.
Because we wouldn’t know anything happened.
There could be hundreds of moments throughout our lives when God has guarded, redirected, delayed, restrained, or prevented something and we simply went about our day completely unaware.
No dramatic testimony.
No frightening story.
No moment when our heart nearly stopped.
Just ordinary life.
And perhaps hidden within some of those ordinary days were mercies we will never know about this side of eternity.
What If the Closed Door Wasn’t Rejection?
This is where Psalm 91:3 can challenge the way we interpret disappointment.
We usually interpret circumstances based upon what we wanted to happen.
The door opened?
God blessed me.
The door closed?
Something went wrong.
The relationship worked?
God answered my prayer.
The relationship ended?
God didn’t give me what I asked for.
The opportunity happened?
Favor.
The opportunity disappeared?
Disappointment.
But what if we don’t have enough information to interpret everything immediately?
A closed door isn’t automatically divine protection. Sometimes a closed door is simply a closed door, and difficulty does not always mean God is telling us no.
We should be careful about assigning God’s motives to every circumstance.
But neither should we assume that every interruption is working against us.
Sometimes we simply don’t know yet.
And trust has to be able to live there.
Protection Doesn’t Always Feel Like Protection
This may be one of the hardest lessons.
If God protects us from something we desperately wanted, His protection may initially feel like loss.
If He redirects us from somewhere we desperately wanted to go, His protection may feel like frustration.
If something doesn’t happen on our timetable, protection may feel like delay.
If a relationship ends, protection may feel like heartbreak.
If an opportunity disappears, protection may feel like rejection.
And we have to be careful here.
We cannot look at every painful event and declare:
“God did that because He was protecting you.”
We simply don’t know enough to make that claim.
Some things are consequences of human choices.
Some are part of living in a fallen world.
Some are losses we may never understand.
But Psalm 91:3 gives us permission to recognize another possibility:
God’s deliverance can reach dangers beyond our ability to recognize them.
The Snare May Have Bait
There’s another uncomfortable part of the image.
A trap often works because something about it is attractive.
If there were nothing desirable near it, the animal might never approach.
And isn’t that often true spiritually?
Some of the things capable of trapping us don’t initially look destructive.
They appeal to something we want.
Recognition.
Companionship.
Security.
Money.
Comfort.
Attention.
Success.
Control.
Pleasure.
Vindication.
The desire itself may not even be wrong.
But something can appeal to a legitimate desire while offering an illegitimate way to satisfy it.
That’s where discernment becomes essential.
Not everything attractive is safe.
Not everything available is God’s provision.
Not every open door is God’s direction.
Not every opportunity deserves a yes.
Not every person who enters our lives should be given unrestricted access to them.
Sometimes wisdom asks a question desire doesn’t want to ask:
Where does this lead?
Deliverance Can Happen Before or After the Snare
There is something else worth noticing in the word deliver.
Sometimes God keeps us from entering something.
Other times He brings us out after we’ve already become entangled.
Both are mercy.
We sometimes imagine God’s protection only as prevention.
But anyone who has ever ignored warning signs, made a poor decision, trusted the wrong person, followed the wrong desire, or walked somewhere they later realized they should never have gone knows another side of God.
The God who can keep us from the snare is also able to deliver us when we’ve become tangled in one.
Maybe you saw the warning and ignored it.
Maybe you didn’t recognize it.
Maybe you knew better.
Maybe you genuinely didn’t.
Maybe you thought you were walking toward something good.
And now you’re realizing:
I’m caught in something I don’t know how to get out of.
Psalm 91 doesn’t merely tell us that snares exist.
It tells us something about God.
“Surely he shall deliver thee…”
The snare doesn’t get the final word.
“And From the Noisome Pestilence”
Then the verse moves from one kind of hidden danger to another.
“…and from the noisome pestilence.”
The KJV word noisome here carries the sense of something destructive or deadly, not simply something noisy.
Pestilence refers to devastating disease or plague.
Again, notice the nature of the threat.
A snare may be hidden because it is deliberately concealed.
Pestilence can be hidden because it is invisible.
You may not see it coming.
You may not know you’ve been exposed.
You may have no ability to identify it with your natural senses.
So both images in the verse confront the same human limitation:
We cannot see everything that can harm us.
The snare is concealed.
The pestilence is unseen.
And standing over both is the God who sees what we cannot.
God’s Protection Is Greater Than Our Awareness
Perhaps that’s the deeper comfort of Psalm 91:3.
Our safety doesn’t depend entirely upon our ability to identify every possible danger.
Thank God.
Because we can’t.
We can use wisdom.
We can pray for discernment.
We can pay attention to warning signs.
We can learn from experience.
We can seek counsel.
We can make careful decisions.
But eventually we reach the boundary of human knowledge.
There will always be something we don’t know.
Something we didn’t notice.
Something we couldn’t predict.
Something happening somewhere we cannot see.
And if our security depends entirely upon our ability to recognize every threat, we will eventually become consumed with trying to anticipate everything.
But Psalm 91 points us somewhere else.
Back to the refuge.
Back to the fortress.
Back to the God in whom we trust.
This Doesn’t Mean We Become Careless
Trusting God’s protection doesn’t mean we abandon wisdom.
We don’t say:
“God will protect me, so I don’t need discernment.”
That isn’t trust.
That’s presumption.
Throughout Scripture, wisdom matters.
Discernment matters.
Counsel matters.
Obedience matters.
Paying attention matters.
God’s protection isn’t an excuse for reckless living.
Sometimes His protection comes through the wisdom He gives us.
Sometimes the warning itself is the deliverance.
Sometimes that uneasy check in our spirit causes us to slow down and pray.
Sometimes Scripture exposes something we were about to rationalize.
Sometimes wise counsel sees what our emotions have made difficult for us to see.
Sometimes God protects us by teaching us to recognize the snare.
But What About the Traps We Never Recognize?
Those may be the ones that humble us most.
Because Psalm 91:3 reminds us that there are limits to what we can discern.
We are never going to become so spiritually mature that we know everything.
We are never going to pray so perfectly that we anticipate every danger.
We are never going to become wise enough to see every consequence before making a decision.
We need God.
Not merely because we are weak.
But because we are limited.
He sees what we cannot.
And maybe there have been times when we were frustrated with God precisely because He could see something we couldn’t.
We asked:
Why won’t You let this happen?
Why isn’t this working?
Why did this fall apart?
Why did that person leave?
Why am I being delayed?
And perhaps sometimes the answer wasn’t punishment.
It wasn’t rejection.
It wasn’t God withholding something good.
Maybe there was simply a snare somewhere ahead that we couldn’t see.
Again, we cannot claim that explanation for every disappointment.
But Psalm 91 reminds us that hidden dangers are real—and God’s sight isn’t limited to ours.
Maybe We Owe God Thanks for Things We’ll Never Know About
That’s the thought I can’t quite get away from.
How many times has God protected us without our knowing?
We thank Him for the obvious miracles.
The accident avoided.
The diagnosis reversed.
The money that arrived.
The door that opened.
The person who showed up at exactly the right time.
But what about everything that didn’t happen?
The road we never traveled.
The person we never met.
The decision we almost made.
The opportunity that never materialized.
The danger that passed without ever announcing itself.
The trap that failed because somehow we walked another direction.
There may be entire chapters of God’s faithfulness written into our lives that we know absolutely nothing about.
And perhaps worship includes thanking God not only for the protection we can identify, but for the protection we cannot.
Father, thank You for every snare You delivered me from that I never even knew was there.
We Don’t Have to See Everything When We Trust the One Who Does
Maybe that’s where this verse ultimately leads us.
Psalm 91:2 said:
“He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.”
Then verse 3 tells us why that trust matters.
Because the world contains dangers we cannot always recognize.
And if we must see everything before we can trust God, we will never have peace.
But faith says:
I don’t see everything.
I don’t know everything.
I cannot predict everything.
But I know the One who is my refuge.
That doesn’t mean nothing painful will ever happen.
It doesn’t mean every disappointment was secretly God protecting us from catastrophe.
And it doesn’t mean believers will never encounter traps.
It means our confidence isn’t ultimately placed in our ability to detect every snare.
It is placed in God.
So perhaps today we can thank Him for something we cannot name.
For dangers we never recognized.
For things He restrained.
For roads He redirected.
For warnings He gave.
For wisdom He provided.
For snares He exposed.
For snares He delivered us from after we became entangled.
And perhaps even for snares we passed by without ever knowing they were there.
Because some of God’s greatest acts of protection may be stories we will never know enough to tell.
Much Love
~Gayla~
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