“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will quiet you by his love. He will exult over you with loud singing.”
– Zephaniah 3:17
Is that not an awesome verse, an awesome picture of God in the middle of His people, promising to restore them? Listen to those words. “The Lord your God is in your midst.” And obviously there’s a specific context here in Zephaniah that God is speaking to His people in. At the same time, these are truths that we see all over the New Testament that God speaks over His people who are in Jesus, His sons and daughters. The Lord your God is in your midst. Jesus made clear, “I will be with you always. You will never be alone. I will be with you, a mighty one who will save, the one who is with you today.”
Zephaniah 3:17 Reminds Us God is with His People Always
Just let this soak in. Wherever you’re sitting, driving, walking, running, whatever you’re doing right now, you are in Jesus. The Lord your God is in your midst. He is with you. He is a mighty one who will save you, not just in the future, but today. He is your savior and He is mighty, and He will rejoice over you with gladness. What a picture of God as our Father, His love for us, His love for you. Would you just feel this right now, that God, the holy God of the universe, look out in creation today? Just think about the one who spoke and it all came into being, and He rejoices over you with gladness. His child, He quiets you by His love.
Oh, amidst the restlessness of your heart, amidst the anxiousness of your mind, be quieted in this moment. Rest in His love. He loves you. He’s holding you in His hand. He will exult over you with loud singing, not just singing. And that in and of itself is quite the picture. God exulting over you, His people, with singing. God is singing over us, with joy over us, with gladness over us, but it’s loud singing. It’s divinely loud singing. Part of me wants to just shout into this microphone. Oh God, this is breathtaking.
Zephaniah 3:17 Leads Us to Praise God for Being with Us Always
Let’s pray for every one of us listening to this word right now and that we would feel the wonder of these words in your Word. And we just say, we praise you God right now for being in our midst, for being with us amidst all the things we are walking through, every one of us, and all the places where we are, all the challenges we’re facing, we’re so thankful. Even in this moment, you’re reminding us we are not alone, and that you are a mighty one who saves us, who delivers us, and not just saves us, but you rejoice over us with gladness. God, who are we? We don’t deserve this. We praise you, Jesus, for making this possible for us. All of these things only possible in you.
So clinging to you as sons and daughters of God, we pray that you would quiet us with your love right now. God, I pray for restless, anxious hearts and minds, you would quiet them with your love right now, all day long when they’re tempted to be anxious or to worry, to despair, that you would remind them that you love them, and you are exulting over them with loud singing. Oh God, we praise you for this reality in our lives and we want everybody to know this. We want everybody to know you like this. Help us to share the gospel with somebody today around us.
Praying for the Gujar Hindu People
God, we pray for people around the world who don’t know this, for the Gujar Hindu people of India, and hundreds of thousands of them who live here in the United States where I am. Oh God, we pray for the spread of this good news of the mighty one who will save to the Gujar, that they might be quieted by your love and saved by your might. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to the Gujar people of India and others who are scattered in many other countries. God, we praise you for Zephaniah 3:17 and we pray you’d help us to live and light of this reality 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 makes Jesus known among the 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, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
