Oh Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.
– Psalm 5:3
Oh, what a great follow up to Psalm 4:8, “So we lie down at night in peace knowing the Lord makes us to dwell in safety.” And then we wake up in the morning and God hears our voice.
Psalm 5:3 Shows Us that God Listens to Our Prayers
From the moment we wake up, God is ready to listen and we prepare a sacrifice for Him and watch. What a picture. Put that together with Romans 12, “Our body is a living sacrifice.” Start your morning this way by going before God and offering your body as a living sacrifice before Him, ready for what that will lead to all throughout the day. You prepare a sacrifice and watch to see how God will lead you and guide you and do in you and through you what only God can do. Yes, that’s that’s the way I want to live. Isn’t that the way you want to live? To rise in the morning, lift your voice to God, and let’s pray.
So some of you are listening to this at the very beginning of the morning. Even if you’re not, let’s just pray as if we are. God, we lift our voice to You first thing and we are so thankful that your ear is attentive to us. From the moment we are conscious in the morning, You hear our voice from the start of the day. So thank you, God, for new mercy, for a new day. Thank you for life for another day, for breath. We love you, God. We praise you as our God from the first moment of our morning and we offer ourselves as sacrifices, living sacrifices before You. Here is our life today. Spend us however you want.
Psalm 5:3 Encourages Us to Pray to Our Heavenly Father
Lead us, guide us by your spirit. We pray for your strength, for your help, for your peace that guarded us all through the night to guard our hearts and minds all through the day, that we wouldn’t be worried about anything today, that we wouldn’t be anxious about anything today. We would trust You with all our heart, lean not on our own understanding at any point today, that in all of our ways today, we would acknowledge You and we pray that you would make our paths straight.
Lord, we watch. We can’t wait to see what You will do, how You will provide, how You will lead, how You will guide us, how You will show yourself strong on our behalf today. We live by faith in You today, trusting in You, knowing that You will hear our voice all day long and your ear, oh God, that your ear will be attentive to us all day long.
So help us to pray continually in light of that and to keep our bodies as living sacrifices before You when we face temptation to run from it. We have opportunities to speak the gospel, to speak it boldly and compassionately. Oh God, direct our day today for your glory. And God, we pray today from the start. We want You to hear our cry from the beginning for people in the world who’ve not heard of your grace and your mercy in Jesus in the gospel.
Praying for the Jola-Mlomp People
God, we pray for the Jola-Mlomp people of Senegal. We intercede for them from the beginning of our mornings. God, cause the gospel to go to the Jola-Mlomp people of Senegal. We pray please, God, cause labourers to go into that harvest field that is plentiful and to reach that people group with the gospel. God, we cry out for them from the start of our day. For your glory among the nations, we pray. Oh God, help us to live every single morning in light of Psalm 5:3, “In the morning, you hear my voice. In the morning, I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” In Jesus’ name, we pray according to your word. 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.
