Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.”
– 1 Samuel 14:6
I love this verse. Jonathan, speaking to this young guy who’s carrying his armor about the Philistines saying, “Hey, let’s go over to this entire garrison of Philistine soldiers, and we can defeat them if the Lord is with us, if the Lord works for us.” That’s the language. “It may be the Lord will work for us.” And then I love this just statement of faith by Jonathan. “For nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, by many or by few.” In other words, Jonathan’s like, “There may be two of us or there may be 200,000 of us, but either way, God can save,” and it’s true.
1 Samuel 14:6 teaches us to trust God for the impossible.
We see this all throughout the Old Testament. Just because Israel has a lot of soldiers and well-trained soldiers, that doesn’t mean they win a battle. If God is not with them, they always lose. And similarly, think about Gideon in the Book of Judges. If it’s just a few hundred people, then they can have victory if God is with them. Everything hinges on the Lord working for us, the Lord being with us, and the Lord can save by many or by few. And there’s so many applications of this today. I just want to encourage you specifically today to pray and live by faith in the power of God to do what is humanly impossible, the power of God to save.
Think about people you have prayed for for years maybe to come to know Jesus, and in a fresh way, pray today, “God, I know you have power to save this person.” Or think about some challenge you’re walking through that feels impossible, and in a fresh way, to pray and live by faith today, to trust that God can do this. God can do the impossible if he desires to, and pray to him with faith and trust in him, like we see in Jonathan here in 1 Samuel 14:6.
And so we pray, oh God, of the impossible. Oh God, the one who has all power to do all things according to your will. The God who is totally unstoppable. We trust in you and we pray that you would help us to live by faith in you today with total trust in you. And even as I pray that, oh God, I pray in my own life and I pray for every one of us listening, I pray for a deeper level of trust in you today than we’ve ever had before. We want to grow in our trust in you and in our faith in you today to save. God, we do. We pray right now.
1 Samuel 14:6 teaches us that nothing can hinder God from saving.
I’m thinking of people, I’m assuming others are, that we’ve prayed for a long time, or people whose hearts seem so hard to the gospel. God, we pray, save. You can do it, we know you can do it. God, we pray, show your saving power. Lord, we pray for circumstances that are heavy on our hearts, that feel impossible. God, they are possible with you.
God, we pray for victory, for healing, for your glory to be put on display in doing the impossible in these circumstances. And God, we trust in you. We trust in your power to do these things. We trust in your love and we trust in your wisdom, that if you choose not to do certain things, it’s because you know things we don’t know and you see things we don’t see, so we trust in you. But God, we pray, help us to grow in our faith today… To know that nothing can hinder you from saving and working in this way or that way. That you will work for those who trust in you in ways far beyond what we can ask or imagine.
Prayer for the Tamasheq Tuareg People
Oh, God, even as we pray for unreached people continually on this podcast… I think about praying today for the Tamasheq Tuareg people. So a million men, women, and children in Burkina Faso and other countries in North Africa. Right now, a million of them have little to no knowledge of your love and Jesus. God, you can save them. You can transform, and cause disciples to be made and churches to be multiplied among all the Tamasheq Tuareg. And not just them, but just every place we might think of as unreached around the world. Lord, you can bring salvation across Yemen. You can bring salvation across Somalia. You can bring salvation across North Korea and Afghanistan. God, you can do it. Nothing can hinder you from saving, by many or by few.
So bless your church in those places, bless missionaries in those places. We pray for the spread of your salvation among the nations. We pray for this in faith, oh God… According to your word in 1 Samuel 14:6, for the nations and for people and circumstances in our lives. And help us to continually pray and live by faith and to grow in faith today. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
