“Then saying Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinoam on that day,”
– Judges 5:1
Which leads right into verse two that goes all the way down to the end of the chapter, verse 31 in a song celebrating how God had worked among his people, through his people, on behalf of his people. Judges 5:1 is a celebration of God’s grace and the victories he had given to them and the ways he had shown himself faithful to them. And it’s specific. It just lists in these days, this happened, in those days, that happened.
God’s Faithfulness and Grace
A song celebrating God’s grace and the ways he had shown himself faithful to them.
And when I read this and I think about what it teaches us in our lives and how it leads us to pray, I can’t help but think about all the specific reasons it is good for you and me to pause and to sing and to shout and to thank God for the specific ways he has worked in our lives, through our lives for us, among us and in our churches, in so many different ways among his people. It is really, really good. I would say extremely critical and not just good. I would say extremely critical for us to regularly pause and look back and thank and praise God for specific ways that he has worked in and around us.
Judges 5:1 Encourages Thankful Prayer to God
And so here’s what I want to do. I want to do something a little bit different on this episode. It’s going to be super short, but you’ve allotted a few minutes for this. Would you just spend the next couple of moments in prayer before God thanking him, praising him for specific ways that he has shown his grace, his mercy, his help, his power in different ways in your life going… Well, it could go back years. It could just be over the last couple of weeks. It could just be over yesterday. This is good to do on a daily basis just to pause and thank God for all of his grace yesterday or today if you’re praying this at the end of your day.
It is good for God’s people to pause and to praise him in thanksgiving and celebration of his grace for specific things he has done. So I’m going to leave the prayer portion of today’s episode with you. I’ll set it up, kind of get it started, but then you continue it specifically in your life.
So God, right now we say together in all kinds of different ways that we’re about to specifically walkthrough before you that we’re going to specifically praise and thank you for, we praise you. So we thank you for your gracious, merciful, powerful, compassionate work in our lives, for our lives, around our lives, through our lives, in all of these specific ways. All glory be to your name for these specific ways you have worked among us.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
