Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

2 Samuel chapter 21, verse 1.

Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year.

And David sought the face of the Lord.

When I read this verse and think about how we might pray based on it, I think about two things.

One, this picture of famine for three years, year after year, again, this is one of those places in the Bible where in one verse, we have three

years summarized just like that. Three years. And even the way this language emphasizes,

year after year, when we walk through trials, we often wonder, when is this going to end? And when we read the

Bible and we come to a verse like this, we need to pause and realize it took us like five seconds

to read that verse that summarizes three years of hardship, famine, all that goes along with that. And so to remember that when we walk

through trials and it feels like they're lasting for a long time, we are not alone. We're not alone

as God's people in the history of God's people, who year after year

after year have found themselves waiting and hoping and longing for change. And yet what did David

do in the middle of all of this?

He sought the face of the Lord.

And so we pray, God help us in our waiting, in trials, in challenges that seem to go on day

after day after day and month after month and year after year help us

amidst the waiting to seek your face God I think about some of the waiting that my family is

doing right now and some of the trials that are lasting longer than we had imagined and certainly the longing

in us for those trials to end and specifically for us to be able to bring our child who we've

been waiting for for year after year now to bring this child

into our home. God, I think about all the different people who are praying with me right now

...