Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things. Let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.
– Psalm 107:43
This is the last verse and a long Psalm. Forty-three verses that over and over again depict the psalmist in trouble, in hardship, three different times. Verses 13, 19, and 28 say, “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.” This is a refrain over and over again in this Psalm. About God’s people crying out to him for help in trouble and trial and God bringing deliverance to them.
One of my favorite verses in the Psalm is verse 35. It says, “God turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.” So that’s what this Psalm is about. It’s about God taking hard days and bringing good through them, God taking difficulties and brokenness and bringing about redemption. In trouble, bringing about deliverance.
Psalm 107:43 teaches us that true wisdom considers God’s steadfast love.
And so you get to the end, Psalm 107:43 says, “Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things.” In other words, wisdom is remembering that God is able to turn deserts into pools of water and parched lands into springs of water. Wisdom is remembering that God hears you in your distress and your cries for help, and God will ultimately deliver you. Wisdom is attending to these things and considering the steadfast love of the Lord, considering the faithful, loyal, merciful, kind love of God toward all who trust in him.
This is wisdom, and I just want to encourage you to be wise today, especially if you’re walking through challenges, trouble, and trials. If you find yourself in a desert place in any way, be wise. Attend to these things. Remember that the God of the universe loves you, that he has invited you to cry out to him for help, and he has promised to hear and answer your cries, to deliver you ultimately from this trouble. That doesn’t mean, as we’ve seen in Scripture over and over again, that God is going to answer exactly what you ask and exactly the timing you want it to happen. But remember: God is a Redeemer. God takes deserts and turns them into pools of water.
Psalm 107:43 challenges us to depend on God’s loving provision.
And so to ask him to help, to provide, to deliver you, to sustain you, to strengthen you, to comfort you, and to know that God will absolutely do all of those things and ultimately do all of these things in ways that turn deserts into pools of water and parched lands into springs of water. That he will show himself as the faithful provider and sustainer and redeemer that he is, in his time.
And so we pray. God, help us to be wise, especially when we walk through trouble, through trials. Help us to remember these things, to attend to your works, to your power. We praise you for your power to turn deserts into pools of water. We praise you for that story in each of our lives, as your children. You took us from death to life. We praise you, Jesus, for turning our lives upside down, for giving us life forever, for we have seen. All of us who are your children have seen and experienced your power to turn a parched land into springs of water. You’ve filled us with your Spirit. You’ve given us new life.
This verse encourages us to trust in God’s loving care.
And so God, help us to attend to these things, to remember your power to do that. As we walk through trials and troubles in this world, to hold fast to faith in you. To cry out to you, as Psalm 107 says, “over and over again in our trouble,” and to trust that you will ultimately deliver us. To trust that you are our deliverer and our provider, and our savior, and our sustainer, and our redeemer. God, help us to be wise, to attend to these things and consider continually your steadfast love.
God, help us never to lose sight of your steadfast love for us, not to doubt your steadfast love for us. Help us to trust your steadfast, faithful love and mercy and grace and kindness toward us. No matter what we face in this world, that your steadfast love will always be with us, that nothing can separate us from it. And as a result, we can trust you. No matter what happens in this world, we can trust in your love. God, we pray for this kind of wisdom in our lives, in trials.
Prayer for the Nigerian Fulani People
And God, we pray that you would help us to point people in a world of trials to your steadfast love around us. Help us to encourage others with who you are as redeemer. God, as we pray for the Nigerian Fulani people of Nigeria and Cameroon, over 18 million of them, amidst so many trials, and especially for the persecuted church in Nigeria, God, we pray that you’d give them wisdom, that you would sustain them. Help them in their distress in all these ways that we see in Psalm 107.
And God, we pray for the spread of the gospel through them to the Fulani people, this unreached people. A group of millions. God, please cause the good news of your steadfast love in Jesus to spread to the Nigerian Fulanis in Nigeria and Cameroon, for your glory, that they might know, enjoy your steadfast love in Jesus. We pray all this in his name, according to your Word, in Psalm 107. 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.
