Hosea chapter 9 verse 12, “Woe to them when I depart from them!” Wow, what a potent, brief, short indictment, caution, warning. “Woe to them when I depart from them!” This is the worst judgment of all, for God to leave us to ourselves, for God to depart from us, to take off his hand of grace and mercy and help and every good thing that he provides, for God to depart from us. Yes, Hosea 9:12 is right, woe to anyone from whom God departs.
And doesn’t that just lead us then to say to God today, well, let’s just pray. God, we need you. We need your mercy. We need your grace. We need your help. We need all the good things that come from your hand that we can get nowhere else. We shudder to think where we would be apart from those good things. But not just those things, God, apart from you. Woe to us if you depart from us. We confess today our need for you all day long and tomorrow and the next day. We have no hope without you. We have no hope without all that comes from you, your wisdom, your strength, your peace, your comfort, your help in every way we need it. We are a very dependent people, totally dependent on you.
So God, remove pride from us, we pray. All pride. We want to die to ourselves today, to any trust in ourselves or hope in ourselves or in anything else in this world. God, all of our hope is in you. Please be with us. As you have promised, please guide us, lead us, direct us, empower us, enable us. God, do in us all the things that only you can do, all the things that we need you to do.
God, we pray this for the peoples of the world. God, for the Qassab, people of Pakistan over a million of them who don’t know you, who don’t know your presence with them, your blessing on them through Jesus. God, we pray for the spread of the gospel to the Qassab people of Pakistan. I pray for this people group. I pray for Muhammad, who is from Pakistan, who I had the opportunity to share the gospel with the other night. God, we pray for his salvation. We pray for the salvation of millions of people in Pakistan, including among the Qassab, that they would know your good, kind, gracious presence through Jesus, that they would know forgiveness of their sin and restoration to you. Oh God, we praise you for the hope that we have in you with us.
We think about Jesus, the last word you said to us in the book of Matthew. “Surely I will be with you always to the end of the age.” We cling to this hope. Apart from you, we can do nothing. Apart from you, we have no good thing. And we praise you for your promise, to be with us, to not depart from us all the way to the end of the age.
All glory be to your name. God with us. And we say together today, we need you with us all day long amidst all the things we’re walking through we’ll face today. Be with us, oh God. Help us to be aware of your presence with us, to trust in you, to lean on you as you lead and guide us as our God. 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.
