Before I read Psalm 84:6 today for Pray the Word and lead us to pray according to it, I want to invite you to do something that’s a little different during this season as we’re walking through a global pandemic and its effect on individual lives. So just talking with different people in the church I pastor and beyond who listen to this podcast and knowing there are so many different needs and ways we can be praying for each other.
I want to invite you, if you have a specific way we can be praying for you, your family, somebody you know during this time. I want to invite you to share that at radical.net/prayerrequest, so radical.net/prayerrequest, and what I want to do is just take those, obviously can’t promise that we’ll get to all of them, but just to look at those each day and then to take one of those or maybe a couple and just pray specifically for that, because I’ve got a feeling some of the things that you are walking through, others are walking through too, and I just want to let God’s word drive us to pray specifically for each other during these days.
So radical.net/prayerrequest. If you could just go there, if there is a specific way we can be praying for you, for people around you, your family, your church, just however the Lord might lead, then put that on there and then I just want to lead us together to pray specifically according to the word for some of those requests. So radical.net/prayerrequest.
Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from radical.net.
Psalm chapter 84 verse six. “As they go through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The early rain also covers it with pools.”
– Psalm 84:6
This whole psalm is about how great, glorious, awesome, lovely is the term, it is to be in the dwelling place of God, to be in communion with God, to know God, to be in his presence, to experience God. And that’s why I love Psalm 84:6 because the Psalmist talks about going through the Valley of Baca and the picture is so a valley, a valley of sorrow, a valley of suffering, but those who know God as they go through the valley of sorrow and suffering, they make it a place of springs. This is something we see all over scripture, that God takes valleys, dry places, and he brings water. He makes this valley a place of springs and I just think about the situation we find ourselves in right now all over the world.
God brings water to dry places. He makes valleys places of springs. And we pray that, in the midst of suffering and sickness, He would make these days fruitful.
Turn This Valley Into A Spring
Many of us quarantined in our homes, this is not an easy time. And the individual challenges that I’m asking you to send in just ways we can pray for you because there are so many different ways we keep praying during these days for each other. But what I want to pray based on this word today is that God would take this valley that we’re in and he would make it a place of springs. In our lives, in countries, in our families, in churches that he would take suffering and sorrow and challenges and that he would pour out water and satisfaction and just like we see in Romans chapter five, joy in the middle of suffering, peace in the middle of suffering. So God, I pray right now for every single person listening to this, no matter what emotions, thoughts, challenges specifically, they are facing.
Psalm 84:6 Prays That These Days Be Fruitful
God, we all find ourselves in a sense in a valley right now, and we pray that you would make it a place of springs. God, we pray that these days would be fruitful. Even in the midst of suffering, even in the midst of challenges, even in the midst of hurt, even in the midst of sickness and just all kinds of different challenges.
So God, please cause these days to be fruitful in our relationships with you. God, draw us into a deeper understanding of what it means to be in your presence, what it means to have your protection, what it means to rely on your provision. Lead us to look to you all the more, and more now than we ever have before. God, I pray for that. I pray for that for every single person who’s listening to this right now. That you would draw every single one of us into deeper intimacy with you, deeper trust in you, deeper abiding in you that we’ve ever experienced before.
Psalm 84:6 Prays That People In The United States Turn To God
God, I pray for that. I pray for that across my country. God, I pray in the United States that you would cause people to look to you, to turn to you, to trust in you and your provision to see you as our sustainer and our help and our hope. God, you are our only hope, and your only hope for making this valley a place of springs. And so we pray that you would do it.
God, I pray that just over every single person who’s listening to this right now, that they would know in a deeper way during these days how lovely is your dwelling place. How good it is to be with you when everything else is falling apart around us. You are our rock. Our refuge. You are our fortress. You are help. Our hope. And we pray that we would look back months, years from now and say as we walked through the Valley of Baca, you made it a place of springs. God, 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.
