Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.
– Psalm 25:4–5
What a great picture of God as our leader, our teacher, and our savior. So just envision those three pictures of God in your life right now. One, he’s your teacher, my teacher. “Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.” We need God to teach us the paths that we should walk in. So we look to God as our teacher and we think about the Holy Spirit as the teacher in us, leading, guiding, directing our thoughts as we meditate on His word and we walk in obedience to it. We need God to teach us his paths.
Psalm 25:4–5 Is a Request for Guidance from the Lord
And then verse five, “Lead me in your truth and teach me.” So he doesn’t just teach us, like tell us what to do. He leads us. This is the beauty of his Spirit in us. We don’t just have instructions. We have the instructor dwelling in us, leading us, guiding us, directing us. “Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.” He’s our savior. He saves us from not just the penalty of sin, he saves us from the power of sin in our lives so that we can walk in his truth, so that we can obey his teaching and follow his leadership as we trust in Him. “For you I wait all the day long,” and the picture of waiting there is just looking to God, trusting in God as our teacher, our leader, and our savior.
So God, we pray to you in light of all three of these pictures right now and we praise you that you’re all these things to us. We praise you as our teacher. You’re the perfect teacher. Everything you teach is perfect, and good, and right, and just, and pure, and holy. All your words, all your teaching is what we need. So teach us, we pray. We pray for humility. Help us to be students in this way of your paths. We want to follow your paths.
Psalm 25:4–5 Is a Prayer for Understanding
I pray especially for people who are going through decision-making processes right now in their lives and just making major decisions. God, I pray that you would teach them your paths and you’d help them to humbly learn from you. We pray that over all of us in every decision we’ll make today. Teach us your paths and lead us in your truths, we pray.
We praise you as our leader. We are so thankful to be led by you. So keep us from trying to lead our own lives. Help us to follow your leadership, the leadership of your Spirit according to your word. Lead us in your truth, for you are the God of our salvation. We praise you as our savior. Save us from sin all day long today. Save us from ourselves as we wait for you all the day long, as we trust in you, as we look to you. God, please keep our eyes fixed on you today as our teacher, our leader, and our savior.
And God, help us to point others to you as teacher, leader and savior today, others in the church and others who don’t know you that we will interact with today. God, help us to be disciple-makers today, leading people to you as teacher, leader and savior, leading people to you. God, may that be what our lives are about today and every day.
Praying for the Manasir People
God, we pray specifically today for the Manasir people of Sudan, nearly a hundred thousand of them, no known followers of Jesus. God, we pray that you would bring them to know you as savior, leader and teacher, as the savior and leader and teacher that they need. God, we pray for disciples to be made and churches to be planted among the Manasir people of Sudan. God, bring it about. Bless our Sudanese brothers and sisters. Bless missionaries in Sudan from other places.
And God, we pray, if you want to lead any of our paths to Sudan, we will follow. Lead us in your truth. Teach us your path; however you want us to make disciples of the nations, we say yes. You are our teacher, our leader, and the God of our salvation, and we pray that you would help us to follow and worship you as such. 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.
