“Out of my distress I called on the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me free.”
– Psalm 118:5
As we are praying through different prayer requests that people are sending in through radical.net/prayerrequest during this pandemic, I encourage you to continue to send those in. Just ways we can be praying for you, your family, your church, your community, during these days. And just praying the words specifically for specific requests each day. I just want to read from this one request where basically someone says, and I won’t use their name, but shared how they were wondering if they wanted to continue living.
Praying for those Contemplating Suicide
How they’ve just really been down during these days and don’t really want to go on. I read this and then I think about news I got today about a friend’s family member who had potentially just taken their life. They’re still investigating all the details, but I immediately, but my heart just sunk as I thought about a variety of people who already struggle with whether it’s depression or anxiety or just desire to live and how the circumstances we’re walking through right now have made that even harder.
I just want us to pray right now Psalm 118:5 for anyone who is in that kind of circumstance. For anyone who is in that kind of circumstance, anyone who is wrestling with those thoughts. Psalm 118:5. Out of my distress I called on the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me free. So God, we pray that right now together over this one particular person who sent this in and numerous people right now who may be wrestling with thoughts about whether or not to continue living. God, we pray, we pray that they would know your love for them in this moment, your hope for them in this moment. That they would know that you, the author of life, love them, desire them to experience life in you, which is not always easy.
Psalm 118:5 Prays for Trust and Faith in God
God, I don’t want to in any way gloss over just hurt, pain, wrestling, thoughts that people are walking through. But God, we just pray. We pray over them in a spirit of trust in you, a spirit of faith in you, a spirit of hope in you. We pray joy over them, God, that supersedes circumstances. That supersedes particularly the lies of the adversary that would say life is not worth living. God, we pray that you would replace those lives with truth, with truth from your word and in their distress that they might look to you and know that you are the Lord and you answer them and you set them free, that your steadfast love, it says over and over and over again in Psalm 118. Your steadfast love endures forever.
Psalm 118:5 Thanks God for His Steadfast Love
God may they know your steadfast love. May they know your steadfast love, we pray. God, may they trust in your love even when their desires or thoughts tell them differently. May they trust in your word and your desires for them and your desires for their life. God, we pray. We pray that you would protect men and women who are wrestling with desire to even live, that you would protect them from the lies of the adversary and all that he would want to do to steal their life away.
A thief comes to steal and destroy. Jesus, you said, but you have come that we might have life and have it to the fullest. God, we just pray that over people right now. We pray Psalm 118:5. In distress may they call to you and may you answer them and set them free that they might live the life to the full that you have created for them. That they might experience your love in new and profound ways particularly in these days. We pray this in Jesus’ name. 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.
