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

1 Samuel, chapter 27, verse 7.

And the number of days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

This is one of those places in the Bible where time is not represented well by the amount of

time it takes for us to read something. Like I think about Genesis, the story of Joseph, and 12 years

that he spends in prison. And it takes like a couple of verses to go through those 12 years,

just like the turn of a page. We don't really feel the weight of 12 years of waiting in prison.

And the same is true here. In 1st Samuel 27, 7, I read this and I hear that the number of days that David lived in

the country of the Philistines was a year and four months. Here he is, like fleeing from Saul at many

points, days afraid for his life. And it wasn't just a day or a week or a month but it was month after month after month for a year

and four months and it just makes me think about my struggles with waiting and I'm guessing you have

the same struggles like we long for resolution to so many different things in our lives, our families,

work, the church, and the world. And it's hard to wait for any amount of time, and particularly

for a long amount of time. And I just want to encourage you today, based on this verse in 1 Samuel 27, 7,

and specifically based on God's faithfulness to David every single one of these days

over the course of this year and four months in the same way that God was faithful to every

single one of those days and months and years for Joseph.

You can trust God.

I can trust God in the waiting.

And I want to lead us to pray for patience in the waiting, which is hard for all of us.

And think about why it's hard, because we don't see all that God is doing.

We don't understand all that God is doing.

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