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

Second 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.

Now 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,

it feels like they are 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. 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 and the pictures

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