We do not see our signs. There is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long.
– Psalm 74:9
What a hopeless picture Psalm 74:9 paints as God’s people say, “We don’t see our signs. We don’t hear from any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long,” and the verses that follow are, “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile Your name forever?”
Psalm 74:9 Is a Prayer of Seeking Guidance in the Dark
The picture is God’s people at a low point, which is common throughout the Psalms and common in our lives. We walk through things that are difficult, hard days, low days. But the beauty we see at so many points is God’s grace and meeting us there. God speaking His Word over us in those moments.
The issue here in Psalm 74:9 is in this low moment, in this dark day, we don’t see any signs. We don’t hear from any prophet, and there is none among us, listen to this phrase, who knows how long? They don’t know how long it’s going to last. These people don’t know when it’s going to end. They have no hope of when injustice and evil and pain will be gone or if it will end. I just read this and I think about the people we pray for on this podcast.
Every day, unreached people in the world who don’t have any word from God about suffering ending. They don’t have the Word from God, that He is just and merciful, that He has sent His son to defeat sin and sorrow and death itself, and that all who believe in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.
Psalm 74:9 Reminds Us that the Unreached are Lost in the Absence of God’s Word
They need someone to speak God’s Word to them to tell them it won’t last forever. Injustice, evil, and pain and sin and death in this world will not last forever. They need the good news of the gospel. When we pray for them on this podcast, I hope it doesn’t just become rote or routine in a sense that we would genuinely enter sea for people who are hopeless without Jesus. Billions of them around the world today to pray for the Faifi people.
It’s a small people group, 50,000 of them in the southwestern corner of Saudi Arabia across the border from Yemen. No followers of Jesus among them, no church among the Faifi people. God, we pray for people who don’t have Your Word, who don’t have a prophet, actually have false prophets and think of Jesus as a mere prophet. They’ve never heard the good news that He is actually Your son, heart of the Trinity, that He has come to save them from their sin and death forever.
God, we pray that You would send Your Word in the mouths of Your people. Lord, that the Faifi people would be reached. Help them know that this world with all its sin and sorrow and death will not last forever. And that life eternal, life and joy and peace are found in Jesus. He is the Lord and Savior and king of all creation.
Praying for the Unreached
God, we pray that the Faifi people and thousands of other people groups like them would be reached with the gospel, with the good news of Your love. And God, we pray that You would help us to speak Your Word faithfully to people right around us. God, we pray that You would help us to speak Your Word of hope to someone else today, to share the good news of Your grace and Your love and Your mercy and Your justice and Your victory over sin and evil to someone else today.
And God, we pray You help us to live until all the people groups of the world have heard this good news that no one would say, “We don’t see or hear anything. There’s none among us who knows how long,” that they would all know God, that all the nations would know that You love them and desire their salvation and have made a way for them to have eternal life with You. God, we pray, spend our lives, our families, and our churches for the spread of this good news in light of hopelessness right now around the world, according to Psalm 74:9, and billions of people and thousands of people groups like the Faifi. In Jesus’ name, we pray, 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.
