A Prayer when God’s Providence is Painful: Psalm 105-Supplication through the Scriptures
A Prayer when God’s Providence is Painful Psalm 105 God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them. John Piper Psalm 105 is a remembrance psalm. Remembrance psalms were to help the people of God build up “confidence for the present and hope for the future as they contemplate God's great acts in the past” (Longman). It is a beautiful psalm recounting God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from captivity in Egypt and God’s faithfulness in keeping His covenant promises to Abraham. However, in the midst of the psalm it says, “When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave” (105:16-17). It might be easy to read quickly past those words and miss that the fulfilling of God’s promises was wrought through the painful providences of Joseph’s life. The story of Joseph takes place in Genesis 37-50. Joseph, the firstborn son of his father’s favorite wife, becomes the...