HelpFinder Bible - Flipbook - Page 849
Psalms
D O Y O U R E M E M B E R what yesterday was like? Can you recall the
range of emotions you experienced? Did you get angry, enthusiastic,
discouraged, or tired? Were you frustrated? happy? lonely? excited?
worried? scared? embarrassed? overwhelmed? Did you feel guilty?
inadequate? Were you grieving over a loss? Did someone hurt your
feelings? Did you laugh or cry? Were your motives always pure? Did
you end the day with regrets over words said or left unsaid? Did you
long to reach out in love to someone? Was your heart aflame with a
budding romance? Were you criticized or ignored?
How did you handle it all?
Most of us don’t stop long enough to think about the amazing range of human
emotions we experience every day. How does the human mind and body deal
with them all? How can we possibly cope with all that’s going on within us?
Sometimes we can’t. God knew we needed a book of the Bible like Psalms.
Psalms becomes a favorite book of the Bible for most believers because it
expresses the deepest feelings of us all. Leaping off the page, the psalmists’
words cry from the depths of their souls, reach for the heights, and do it all with
a spirit of candor that is wonderfully refreshing.
Not only can we relate to most of the emotions and feelings expressed in
these poetic hymns, but we can also discover how the psalmists worked their
way through their emotions. Some of these emotions and feelings are not Godgiven but are a result of our sinful human nature. The Psalms help us work
through these emotions and understand how to channel them into productive
service for God—or how to recognize those that spell danger for us. The Psalms
teach us that we don’t have to hide our feelings from God. In fact, God encourages us to talk through our anger, pain, frustration, joys, and triumphs with
him. In doing so, we begin to know the mind of God himself, and our hearts
will be moved to praise our Creator for making us so wonderfully complex and
responsive to all that goes on around us.
Read the Psalms to come face-to-face with your own emotions and to better
understand them. Read the Psalms also to learn ways to work through your
emotions with the help of the God who created you with the ability to experience them. Read the Psalms to discover how to talk to God. Memorize some of
them to help you better express yourself to God.
Discover and appreciate the incredible range of human emotions within you
that allows you to respond to life in so many ways. And then remember the
ultimate goal of each psalm: to praise the God who created us.
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