“May the LORD fulfill all your petitions!”
– Psalm 20:5
Isn’t that great? Short, simple verse. It’s actually the last part of Psalm 20:5. Let me say it again, may the Lord fulfill all your petitions. May I ask you a question just to think about in your life and then to let this question and this verse lead us into prayer. If God gave you all that you were asking for right now, what would you have? If God gave you all, like everything that you were asking for, what would you have? Things specifically, not just in your own life, but as you’re petitioning God for things in others’ lives, you’re petitioning God for things in the world, what would you have if God gave you everything you were asking for?
Ask The Father
As I ask that question, I just want to remind you of James in the New Testament who writes, “We have not because we ask not.” All the promises that we have from Jesus over and over and over again in the New Testament saying, “Ask for me whatever you wish, ask for me anything, according to my name, according to my word, and it will be given to you.” What a promise that we have. So what a promise we have, and then Psalm 20:5 here, it’s just a prayer of blessing. I want to pray it over you and me and us, may the Lord fulfill all our petitions. May we ask for a lot from the Lord knowing that he’s our father. He loves us. He delights in answering our prayers, fulfilling our petitions.
So let’s pray. Oh God. When we pray, please teach us to trust your generosity, your promises, your desires, to fulfill our petitions, to give us what we ask, and even in circumstances where what we are asking for is not best, your trustworthiness that you will give us what is best, that you will provide in ways that are best according to your wisdom and your knowledge and ultimately your power and your love. So we pray that you would teach us to be zealous in our asking, persistent in our asking, constant in our asking.
Psalm 20:5 Reminds Us to Petition to God
God, we pray that we would petition you all day long every day, that we would constantly be asking you for help, for your provision, for your direction, for your hand at work, in our lives, in others’ lives, in the world around us. God, we pray that it would not be said of us that we didn’t have from you because we didn’t ask of you. And God, we ask for your blessings in our lives, in our families, in our churches, in our work. We’ve asked for your blessing on the people around us, the people that we will be around today. God help us to be active in asking for your provision on behalf of others all day today, all day tomorrow. Others right around us, others far from us.
Prayer For the Najdi People
God, as we pray for the Najdi Arabs in Saudi Arabia, 13.8 million of them hardly any followers of Jesus. God, we pray for those few believers among the Najdi Arabs in Saudi Arabia. Lord God, please, we ask for your provision for them. May you fulfill this petition, strengthen them, use them to lead many people around them to Jesus, cause more people to go to Saudi Arabia with the gospel.
We pray for the salvation of many Najdi Arabs. May you fulfill our petition, oh God, we pray. God, we pray this for so many other petitions. In fact, I want to close this time in prayer on this podcast episode, but I just want to invite you as you’re listening, not to stop here, but just to start calling out to God for his grace and his help in every way that comes to your mind. God, we pray that you would teach us to pray like this, knowing that you are generous and that you’d give according to what we ask. Oh God, as we pray right now, I pray over every single person listening right now, Lord, may you fulfill all their petitions. In Jesus name, we pray right now. Amen.
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.
